Defining Engineers: How Engineers Think About the World

Defining engineers: How Engineers think about the world

Mark J. McCready Department of Chemical Engineering University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana USA

Version: 7/12/98 Keywords: engineering curriculum, engineering careers, engineering method

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Motivation for this essay

It is not what engineers do, but how they think about the world that makes them different.

Since this essay is written by a chemical engineer and is intended to help students or prospective students understand and appreciate engineering, I make the assumption that “different is better”.

Summary

A person who calls herself a Chemical Engineer is expected to have a definable set of characteristics about how she views and interacts with the world as an engineer and a requisite “tool chest” (of analytical and mathematical skills) to use in this process. The intention of this essay is identify and explain this set of characteristics and give some insight into how engineers think. Students who are studying or wish to study engineering, need to be made aware of what it means to be an engineer and how each aspect of their education contributes to this outcome. I hope that this essay will help them to understand what they are trying to become.

Overall traits of engineers

Engineers are more than middle-aged men who, when talking to non engineers about a particular device, will use the entire 8 character alpha-numerical code that their company uses to designate said device. As part of an overall definition, I suggest that engineers understand how to use techniques of engineering analysis to design (i. e. synthesize) working devices and processes even though they have an imperfect understanding of important physical, chemical or biological

3 issues. Vincentii (1990) gives several examples from aeronautical engineering where his view is that engineering is a battle against uncertainty. This imperfect understanding can be caused by too little time and or money to attain it,...