VOLUME 13, NO. 2     NOVEMBER 2000

New books feature work of University authors

IEEE text includes lessons from the WPI curriculum

What direction will engineering take in the 21st century? According to at least one chapter in Engineering Tomorrow, a new book from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), educators need to encourage interdisciplinary problem solving to develop an implicit knowledge base among their students that will make them sensitive to the impact of technology on society.

If that sounds like the WPI Plan, it's because President Edward Alton Parrish was interviewed for Chapter 12, "How Can Students Experience the Impact of Technology on Society?" The text is being marketed to a large segment of the international technical community, including the more than 350,000 members of IEEE. Parrish, who is also quoted in the introduction, was one of only a few scholars interviewed for the book, which also includes extensive coverage of WPI's academic programs and a full-page color photo of students working on an Interactive Qualifying Project in Bangkok.

Traditional engineering programs focus on explicit knowledge -- the kinds of things found in a handbook, Parrish says. They need to focus more on implicit knowledge, which isn't something you just read and memorize. "It's something you have to experience to learn -- almost a sixth sense a professional develops after long experience." That's why, he says, companies don't solve complex problems at some global site by having someone send a memo -- "they send a person to transfer the knowledge, because there are gray areas requiring experience and judgement."

Because it takes a lot of time to develop implicit knowledge, engineering programs need to introduce societal issues, especially ethics, to their students early in their college careers, Parrish says. Most of these 18- to 22-year-olds are focused on learning how to use data or instruments, or on getting the right answer. "But they won't know how to cope with gray areas until they face something real."

At WPI, he explains, projects in which students concentrate on solving a real-life problem at the intersection of technology and society are the key to that understanding. These projects, he says, can take the form of assessing environmental issues in the slums of Bangkok, deterring the ravages of pollution in Venice's canals, or exploring how technology can improve life for handicapped people in London. "I know of no other institution that pays that kind of attention to the societal impact of engineering."

Parrish is known for his seminal work in pattern recognition and image processing. He recently chaired the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. He was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1986 and an ABET Fellow in 1997.

Sokal co-authors new book on AAAS

History Professor Michael M. Sokal is one of three authors of The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. With 145,000 members, the AAAS is the largest general organization of scientists in America. But the book, published by Rutgers University Press, is more than a history of the organization; it connects to recurring issues in the general history of American science.

Sokal and professors Bruce V. Lewenstein of Cornell University and Sally Gregory Kohlstedt of the University of Minnesota were the primary writers, each for a 50-year span. AAAS President Stephen Jay Gould wrote the foreword. Sokal wrote the chapter "Promoting Science in a New Century: The Middle Years of the AAAS." The authors were honored at a reception during the AAAS annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in February.

Sokal, who joined the faculty in 1970, is a fellow of the AAAS and is currently the retiring chair of the association's section on history and philosophy of science. The last WPI professor to lead an AAAS section was Leonard P. Kinnicutt, who taught chemistry at WPI from 1882 to 1911 and chaired the AAAS section on chemistry in the early 1900s.

The author of a forthcoming biography of James McKeen Cattell, who was editor of Science from the late 1800s to 1944, Sokal was program director for science and technology studies at the National Science Foundation in Washington from 1998 to this past summer. In this position he oversaw all NSF grantmaking for research and training in history, philosophy and the social studies of science and technology.