Teaching prospective engineers to balance creativity and innovation with what they know will work, that's the tricky job of engineering schools.
Whether it’s space rockets, smart phones, or technologies we haven't even imagined yet, engineers are the ones who actually turn magical ideas into functional reality. It's a job that requires a precarious and under-appreciated balance of imagination and pragmatism.
Think about it. Designing the next wave of technologies requires innovation and risk taking. But when it comes right down to it, the things engineers build need to work. Lives may depend on it.
So how do we teach prospective engineers to walk that tightrope? It's a question Ed Crawley has spent a lot of time thinking about. Crawley is the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT and director of the Bernard M. Gordon–MIT Engineering Leadership Program. He's also the lead author of a recent book, Rethinking Engineering Education: the CDIO Approach.
CDIOstands for conceive, design, implement, and operate. CDIO education pushes students to develop broad scientific and social expertise and encourages hands-on construction projects from the first days of training, before students reach the dry - potentially imagination-killing - but essential coursework in math and physics.
Crawley is putting CDIO into action at Skolkovo Insitute of Science and Technology, a university in Moscow which he founded in 2011 and now leads. Before that, Crawley led the Cambridge – MIT Institute, a joint venture with Cambridge University, funded by the British government and industry. But Crawley says what makes him happiest is actually being in the classroom with students - something he continues to make time for.