Joseph J. Helble

Dispelling the Myths of Holistic Engineering

Over the past year, articles by Grasso and others – including Holistic Engineering and Holistic Engineering and Educational Reform – have followed former IEEE President Joe Bordogna in adopting the term “holistic engineering” to describe a more cross-disciplinary, whole-systems approach to engineering education. It is an approach that emphasizes contextualized problem formulation and encourages innovative changes to traditional engineering training.

Holistic Engineering and Educational Reform

The challenges of the coming century will demand creative, innovative and holistic solutions that will require broader pre-professional preparation. This paper summarized several programs that have model curricula designed to address these concerns. Curriculum reform is not without challenges and it is not suggested that all traditional programs abandon a departmental structure and seek an integrated organization and curriculum. However, a first step in moving toward a curriculum that can better educate holistic engineers might be to work toward true interdisciplinarity at both ends of the undergraduate experience. By structuring a first year design course that brings together students of varied interests and backgrounds, the profession of engineering can be contextualized within a societal framework inspiring students to seek creative solutions. Complementing the first year course, a unified senior design course that is truly interdisciplinary and involves engineering students of all disciplines together would better prepare our students to design the holistic, creative, and integrated solutions that will serve societys needs.