Our strategic plan calls for greater focus on societal needs


At Reunions I unveiled our new strategic plan to a standing-room-only crowd of alumni, staff, faculty, and friends of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).

Titled “Engineering for a Better World: The Princeton Vision,” this plan describes our bold agenda for reshaping engineering teaching and research to better address the needs of society.

I was very pleased that President Shirley M. Tilghman was on-hand for this momentous occasion.

Titled “Engineering for a Better World: The Princeton Vision,” this plan describes our bold agenda for reshaping engineering teaching and research to better address the needs of society.

“We have much to be proud of at SEAS,” she said. “SEAS is a jewel. We have a very fine school of engineering that has one great advantage that no other school can claim: Princeton’s engineering school is embedded in the heart of one of the world’s leading liberal arts universities.

“The field of engineering is changing rapidly. The field of 21st-century engineering is very different from 20th-century engineering. If the field is changing, that means the way we educate engineers must change, too.

Now is the time to build on our past success to lead engineering research and teaching for the 21st century. This is one of the top priorities for Princeton. This is our chance for Princeton University to lead the nation in thinking about how engineering and research are going to be done in the 21st century.”

Meet world needs
Our vision is to create a school of engineering that will meet the needs of the world today, and for the coming decades in a way that would be hard for any other school of engineering to achieve.

Recognizing the profound effect that technology has on nearly every aspect of life, our vision for engineering calls for greater integration between the traditional pursuit of technological innovation and broader considerations of public policy and social, economic, and environmental concerns.
This plan builds on the core strengths of the engineering school while fostering a greater interplay between scientific disciplines and a closer connection with the rest of the University and its strengths in the humanities and social sciences.
The vision statement is available online at www.princeton. edu/~seasweb/.

The process
Our strategic plan grew out of a year long strategic planning process that involved more than 750 faculty members, students, and staff as well as alumni and leaders from other institutions and industry. The school held 11 workshops on topics ranging from issues of graduate and undergraduate education to specific research areas such as nanotechnology and information technology. The resulting plan was presented to President Tilghman, the Board of Trustees, and the faculty earlier this year.

Multidisciplinary
A common theme of the strategic planning process was the need for a multidisciplinary approach to solving problems. The most challenging problems demand not only a variety of technical expertise, but also a range of nontechnical perspectives.

If you want to have an impact on the world, you have to understand policy and commerce and economic implication. You have to understand human beings.

This vision counters the conventional view of engineering as a narrowly focused, exclusively technical endeavor that has limited interaction with other areas of research or society.

Engineering at Princeton has never entirely conformed to this model; students are well-rounded, and the small size of the school facilitates cross-disciplinary initiatives.

Princeton will build on these advantages to transform engineering into a field that is closely connected to many other disciplines and is better equipped to tackle real-world problems.

Two initiatives
The strategic plan outlines two foundational initiatives concerning teaching and research. It then proposes a number of focused research initiatives that address societal needs and build on strengths in the engineering school and the larger University.

The first foundational initiative focuses on setting a new standard for excellence in engineering education by integrating real-world problem solving into the basic curriculum, and exposing students to more interdisciplinary opportunities.

At the same time, we will expand its already successful efforts to engage nonengineers in learning about technology. Currently, nearly two-thirds of all Princeton students take at least one engineering course; our goal is to increase that number to 95 percent in 10 years.

Whether students are studying English, history, public policy, or psychology, we want virtually every one of them to take courses that will equip them to understand technology of the future, how it is created, and how it interacts with society.

The second foundational initiative is “to create an environment in which high-impact interdisciplinary research germinates and thrives.

Building bridges
We want to create a school-wide hiring process to recruit faculty members who bridge our six engineering departments: chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and operations research and financial engineering.

These faculty members will help jump-start initiatives that might not have arisen within conventional departmental boundaries and have great potential to address real-world problems.

We also plan to construct new laboratory space, including open, multiuser facilities that will attract visitors from industry and other institutions and spawn collaborations.

Research areas
In addition to these initiatives, the strategic planning process identified nine specific research areas in which we have substantial strengths and that have great potential to address real-world problems.

These areas range from technology, specific subjects such as bioengineering, information technology, and nanotechnology to subjects framed by societal needs such as electronic privacy and security and engineering for the developing world.

Broad diversity
In all these initiatives, we emphasize the importance of achieving a broad diversity among engineering faculty and students regarding gender as well as cultural, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.

If engineering is to become truly engaged in understanding and solving societal problems, its practitioners must reflect society. Increasing diversity will facilitate new approaches and ways of thinking about engineering, while strengthening the link between technology and society.

The combination of initiatives described in the plan will not only yield benefits to society but also will establish SEAS as one of the nation’s leading engineering schools.

I believe that if we fulfill this vision, we will attract the best students and the best faculty. I believe we will have an enormous impact and that other engineering schools will look to us and cheer us on and use what we do as leverage to push their own schools forward.