HOW BRIGHT IS THAT

If you took a stroll down a hall of the University of Bologna in the 12th Century and looked into random doorways, you would have seen professors holding forth in Latin to rooms full of bored-looking students. The professors would be droning on interminably in language few of the students could understand, perhaps occasionally asking questions, getting no responses, and providing the answers themselves. You might see a few students jotting down notes on recycled parchment, a few more sneaking occasional bites of the cold pizza slices concealed in their academic robes, some sleeping, and most just staring vacantly, inwardly cursing the fact that iPods would not become readily available for another 800 years. Toward the end of the lecture, one student would ask “Professore, siamo responabili per tutta questa roba nell’esame?” and that would be the only active student involvement in the class. Eventually the class would be released, and the students would leave grumbling to each other about the 150 pages of reading assigned for the next period and expressing gratitude for the Cliffs Notes version of the text. American engineering education doesn’t exactly follow that model. For one thing, the only engineering professor in the Western Hemisphere—and maybe in the world—who could lecture in Latin was Rutherford Aris, and he’s deceased. Hard drives have replaced parchment, baseball caps and jeans have replaced caps and gowns, and (this is a huge difference) students in Bologna actually had a lot of power, including the responsibility of hiring professors and the right to fire them if their performance was considered unsatisfactory. Leaving those differences aside, however, the fact is that things haven’t changed all that much since the 12th century. If you walk down the hall of an early-21st-century engineering school and look into random doorways, there’s a good chance you’ll see the descendants of those Bolognesi staring vacantly, TEACHING ENGINEERING IN THE 21ST CENTURY WITH A 12TH-CENTURY TEACHING MODEL: