
If you want to grow an engineer of the future, you need to be an engineer of the future yourself – so Phillip Sanger thinks. He is a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Purdue College of Technology and Director of the Center for Accelerating Technology and Innovation. Dr. Sanger told us about the key points of future engineers’ training.
– Philip,
what difference do you see between an engineer who worked 20 years ago, today's
engineer, and engineer of the future? Or is there no difference?
My father was an engineer, and as an
engineer he needed to be well educated within his discipline. It was not critical
to have additional knowledge. Today the engineer must be multi-disciplinary, and
have broader additional knowledge. Most of the engineering problems are
multidimensional, and their solution requires knowledge in more than one
discipline. Furthermore the engineer of the future, in 3-4 year’s time, may
have a completely different job – one that doesn’t even exist today. And you
need to be flexible enough to adapt.
Let me explain with an example from my own
experience. I have a degree in physics with my advanced degrees in nuclear engineering.
But I have spent my entire career spinning off or developing a broad range of
technologies into new real products and applications. I worked with a team that developed
superconducting magnets for M.R.I., magnetic resonance imaging. At that time superconductivity was a new
technology being applied to a real medical need. As my career continued to evolve, I had
enough flexibility to successfully move in other dramatically different areas
such power electronics, glass drawing, and SiC semiconductors. Engineers of the future must be prepared to
move in the same way; –Engineers should always be lifelong learners (self-directed
learners), continually improving themselves, expanding their knowledge, being willing
to learn and not be afraid to enter new areas of knowledge. If you are doing
your job and suddenly there is a need to learn something new, you have to jump
in with confidence to explore new things and continue with that attitude for your
whole life. And this is one of the challenges that the engineer of the future
faces that’s different from what I did and what my father had done because
technology is changing so quickly and we can easily be left behind.
Above all, the engineer is a solver of
problems at all times. If you look at all engineers: electrical, mechanical,
nuclear – they are all solving problems. They do it in different ways, using
different tools and their expertise in a particular discipline may also be different.
But the common thread for all engineers, the heart of their profession, is to
solve problems.
– Is
thinking aimed at solving problems "switched on" only when you’re at
work or does it follow the engineer round everywhere?
I believe that an engineer is an engineer 24
hours a day, at work, at home, on vacation… because solving problems is the way
an engineer’s head is wired. When he or she comes home, they think the same way
as in the workplace. Solving problems is a way of life and it's not something
that you can turn off. If your husband or wife is an engineer, you just have to
recognize it and accept it as the way it is.
– Does
thinking like an engineer help the person in real life, or it is it a hindrance?
It certainly helps. Engineers approach
problems is an organized way, always looking for solutions. And so it doesn’t
matter whether the problem is a technical one or an organizational one, or a
social one. We just analyze the problem
and look for solutions. Your question
brings to mind the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. In that book
one of the things that cause conflict between men and women is exactly
this: the men are always trying to solve
their wife’s problems. According to the book, women on the other hand often
only want someone to listen to them while they sort out the issues and solve
their own problems. You can imagine the
trouble that the engineer husband might get into just doing his problem solving
“thing”. So even if you are the best
engineer in the world, problem solving may not bring peace and tranquility at
home (he laughs).
– So,
do you think a woman can be a good engineer?
Absolutely yes! We don’t have enough women engineers
in the U.S. In Russia there are three
times more women engineers than in the U.S. I have found that women bring new
dimensions that are very valuable when working in a team. They often have a
different perspective, and women can refresh the ideas. So when a team includes
both men and women, this group becomes much more dynamic and exciting.
Dr. Sanger working with Brandt Price, an Engineering student at WCU, to design and build a machine to help elderly people recover from knee replacement surgery. On photo with Dr. Cliff Faull, an orthopedic surgeon, and his patient.
– How
do you teach your students?
I try to teach by doing and by personal
example. I try to convey to them the excitement of being an engineer. My students are the engineers of the future.
I try to teach them to be lifelong learners, to be open minded, to welcome new
knowledge, and take on challenges with vigor.
– How
do you motivate them to lifelong learning when even five years of study can be
a burden for some people?
This is a real problem. Today's children
are impatient about life. They always
seem to want multiple activities going on.
Just note the earphones. But they are not used to just stopping and thinking…
just for a moment. And they have very serious problems around communication. In
order to learn a new technology, first you need to be able to study the issue
yourself, and that takes time. Then, when you have some basic knowledge, you
can call the company that uses this technology, and ask them everything about
it. They will do it with great pleasure. I find it interesting that one of the
things today's generation finds difficult is to call someone and just ask them
for help. If they cannot get the information electronically on the internet,
they throw up their hands and say they couldn’t find it.
It is possible to motivate them but often
it means gently pushing them outside their self-imposed limitations. To do
this, we have to create situations in which students must come out of their comfort
zone. In many U.S. engineering programs, students take part in real projects
that are supported by industry. Each project is a real problem for a company and
because a solution has value to the company, they are willing to pay the
University to explore solutions. At Purdue, we give the students at the
beginning of the year a catalog of industry projects from which they can indicate
their preferences. From their preferences and the skills needed for the
project, we form teams. A distinctive feature of our projects is that solutions
are not known at the beginning and the students must gather data and choose the
best solution. This is what we call “open ended problems”. Students have to work with a lot of
information and sort the facts. This is self-learning that I mentioned in the
beginning and very challenging. But not
knowing what the correct answer should be, students can become afraid that they
cannot cope with the task. At the end of the project, they are pleased with the
fact they have done a good job and solved a real problem. Their project was not
a homework problem that you never put into practice. This is a real engineering
solution that has to work.
Working with industry is important for the
faculty too since we get to see the latest technologies. Industry must work at
the edge of technology to remain competitive, so a professor will inevitably
learn from them while working on a project for that industry. In doing so you raise yourself up to the next
level, you stay current, because the decisions that are required for industry
must be based on the latest and best technologies available. And this is a
wonderful mechanism that keeps renewing the skills of engineering teachers and enables
them to stay aware of what is happening around them.
To help you better understand, I’ll tell
you a problem that one of my student teams are tackling right now. There is a
huge truck manufacturing plant in Indiana. In this plant the assembly of the truck
begins in an inverted position and then is turned over where the remaining
parts are attached and the assembly completed. Not very often, but often enough
to be a nuisance, the flipping operation is not completely successful and the
truck assembly does not land in the correct position. So a group of my students is developing a high
precision vision system to correct this situation and give the automated
controls the ability to move the assembly into the good position and avoid
shutting down production. This is an example of the kind of real world problem
solving that my students have now experienced.
Students from WCU design and built a motorized climbing machine to help U.S. Air Force Paramedic climb cliffs quicker and faster.
– Who
are your students?
Over half of them come from the state of Indiana
which is a rural and farming area in the central part of the United
States. We also have many students from
large urban centers like Chicago. And
finally we have a very large number of foreign students from all over the world
but mostly from China and Asia.
– For
whom is it easier to learn: for those who grew up on a farm or in the city?
That question is not easy to answer. People
who grow up on a farm know how to make things, how to use tools, how to solve
problems. They realize that if the tractor has broken down, they just have to fix
it. Urban students often do not have those skills but they are better able to
express themselves in other skills like computer graphics that living in the
city may provide. Both skills are important and valuable in the diverse workforce
that today’s world needs.
– Do
you know why children from farms decide to become engineers and not continue to
the work of their fathers?
Farming technologies have advanced greatly.
Just look into the huge tractor of today’s farm – 15 meters across using GPS
guidance and continually connected to the market and the internet while tilling
the soil in the field….A modern automated factory on wheels. So today you don’t need to have a lot of
people to run a farm and there is not enough work on the farm for all the
children. All the children are not
needed to run the farm and thus they have to find other careers. In addition,
some farm kids just do not like farming and want to come to the urban centers.
– Do
your students become good engineers?
Yes, they do. We have graduates throughout
the world working in major international corporations as well as being
entrepreneurs owning their own businesses. We try to stay connected with our graduates
and know that many of them have become very successful. One of the advantages
of growing up on a farm is building of a strong work ethic. Farming is hard
work but a farmer gets to see the fruits of his work, the harvest in the
fall. So these young men and women come
to the university with the mentality of a good work ethic. The inner system of
values and work ethic dictates to them that they should work hard and will
see the fruits of their labor if they do so. Whether you grew up in the city or
on a farm, strong motivation and the willingness to work hard are what it takes
to be successful and a good engineer.
– How
long does it take for a graduate to fully engage in work in a company?
It depends. Generally it can take about one
to two years. Many companies in America
invest a lot of time in their young workers to help them develop. In the first
year they move them from one part of the company to another so that they can
get acquainted with different types of work and understand where they like it best,
where they are better able to apply their knowledge. Doing the kind of projects
that we talked about earlier shortens that transition time. It takes less time for our students to adapt
in comparison to a typical graduate engineer because even in the educational process
they begin to work with the real thing.
Students from Western Carolina University work on an external covering for the U.S. Coast Guard turbine engine.
– In
Russia they think that it is necessary to start studying to become a good
engineer from the 5-6th grade. What do you think?
I think that it is true because children
start making decisions on who they want to be at that age. They look and see
professions that they admire and want to follow in those footsteps. In the United States we start to form the
ideas about future professions in the children’s heads when they are 5-6 years
old. And if you ask a child, "What does
an engineer do?" the child will most likely say that he drives a train,
because the child does not have a clear vision about engineering as a profession.
In English the name for the train driver
is the same as the technical engineer. The
child sees what a doctor or nurse does, but not an engineer. Having a vision of
and understanding what the engineer does is essential so that kids make good
choices. And that is one of the biggest
challenges that faces the engineering profession, creating that vision for
children of who we are and how exciting our life is. For
children in the US, the middle school years, when the children are around 11
years old, are critical. This is a critical point because, if the child at this
age does not choose to study mathematics, physics and chemistry, they won’t have
the solid base that it takes to go to college and become an engineer.
– It
is clear about the students, so what are the challenges facing those who teach
them?
In order to turn the students in to the
engineers of the future, teachers have to be engineers of the future themselves
and that begins with being engineers in the present. Many engineering
professors at the university have never worked as engineers in industry. It is
very difficult to teach a student to become a practical engineer when you have not
had the experience of been one yourself?
Many of my engineering colleagues at American universities are brilliant
and talented researchers but have limited experience actually working in
industry and practicing engineering. I
worked for 25 years in industry before I became an academic teacher, so I understand
the importance of this. I suspect that
this situation is also being felt in other universities across the world as
well.
But even if you are an experienced
engineer, a very big challenge is keeping current in the technology. Technology in all areas is advancing so
quickly that being able to teach our students about today’s technology is
difficult.
– Why is the difference between a scientist and an engineer so strong, because you know a scientist also solves problems...?
I believe that the responsibility of the
scientist is to create new knowledge, make new discoveries, and probe into the
wonders of the world. Yes, problems must
be solved to make these discoveries, but there is often an engineer on the team
that solves these problems. Engineers,
on the other hand, are usually not focused on new discoveries. While they come
up with new technologies and new understandings, it is not the same as
exploring how the world works. The engineer usually applies knowledge to
solve problems and “applies” is the key word here.
Purdue team - winner of Stryker Robotics.
– What
are you working on now?
Nowadays teaching is my passion, and I'm
working on a new model for the graduation project (a capstone project). The point
is that most of my students have never travelled outside of the state of
Indiana, and only a very small number of them have been outside the United
States. But the engineer of the future won’t be able to avoid the challenge of
being a global person – and this is another important difference between him
and the engineer of the present. To carry out projects in the future we will
need to work with people from all over the world. My students do not have such
experience. They do not have sufficient
funds to spend a year or even a semester abroad. So I’m developing a mechanism
that will allow for the creation of teams at Purdue University, the
Universities of Kazan and many other foreign universities to collaborate on
projects with support from companies. Most of the project work would be carried
out on the Internet using many of the tools that students already use in daily
life. But in addition I would like to arrange
two one week trips to visit each other at certain stages of the project. Perhaps
one of the trips will be on the project start date and it will help us all to
organize ourselves, to develop the concept.
These trips would allow the students to meet each other as persons and
get to know different cultures. I don’t think that this model has ever been
done before, and I want to see this program running before I retire and bring
it to such a level that it would be self-sustaining.
To be or not to be a global engineer
largely depends on interpersonal skills. I jokingly say that in order to become
a global engineer you must be able to play well in the sandbox like we did as
children. Sometimes we can observe how three year olds play in a sandbox
building castles together but then sometimes throwing sand at each other or
fighting for toys. Maybe it's okay if you are 3-5 years old, but if you are 25,
you cannot play by those rules. You must
listen to your friends and colleagues, and you must be able to work in a team. A
global engineer is always looking to communicate ideas, otherwise they make
mistakes. And if you look into their eyes and they don’t have any understanding
of what you are talking about, you will just have to learn how to inform them
in another way. I am hoping that this international graduation project will
give my students a chance to start growing in cultural awareness.
– A
difficulty in communication is one of the problems that hinder the development
of engineering?
Yes, communication is probably the most
critical part of engineering. For
Americans, a serious communication limitation is that we only speak one
language. Yes, today the whole world speaks English, but in fifty years (and
perhaps sooner) this language could be Chinese. This could be a real problem. In
this regard, students from other countries are in a better position: they know
their native language as well as English and often a few other languages. Russia
is experiencing a similar challenge in communication. For many generations during the Soviet years,
professors and researchers only needed to know the Russian language and Russian
was all they knew. Now those same
professors in their late 40’s and 50’s are facing a world that requires them to
know English. I am trying to learn
Russian and I know that our old brains are not easily trained in a new language
and these very talent professors are having a difficult time.
– And
finally, what could you advise for those who have not yet made a choice in
favor of any profession, and for those who are already studying to become an
engineer?
For children who have not yet made their choice, I can say: be adventurous and do not be afraid – you'll be able to cope with everything and the world of engineering is exciting. Solving people’s problems and helping them live better is really satisfying. If you do not like it, then you can try something else. The worst thing is to do nothing and not try…. because you can’t achieve anything through indecision. And for those people who have already chosen their profession, I ask them to remain open to new and bold ideas and give their all to making this world a better place to live in peace.