The graphic above indicates that NCEER Scholars are drawn from existing programs at Northwestern: the Segal Design Institute (Segal) and several NSF-funded projects: the VaNTH Engineering Research Center (ERC) in Bioengineering Educational Technologies, the National Center for Nanotechnology Learning and Teaching (NCLT), the Center for Connected Learning (CCL), and the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC), all of which have components at Northwestern.
NCEER's mission is to serve as a catalyst for the transformation of engineering education, both within Northwestern and more broadly.
This transformation is necessary because the engineer of the future will need more than a mastery of traditional technical skills. He or she will need to become a flexible expert, adaptable to – and able to innovate within – a wide range of problem areas and scenarios; all while retaining a full repertoire of technical skills. In addition, new engineers must understand the social and cultural context of their work, as both the worldwide impact of their work grows, and the work itself becomes globalized.
NCEER is building a community of interdisciplinary experts to carry out the research necessary to reform engineering education around these needs, as well as promoting awareness of these issues within the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. NCEER also serves as a hub, disseminating research and forging relationships within the engineering school, across schools at Northwestern, and with other universities with similar aims.
NCEER Director Rob Linsenmeier
We believe that technology itself has a useful role to play in engineering education, including online interactive courseware and classroom response systems. NCEER is conducting research on the effectiveness and best practices of such technologies in order to put them to their best use based on empirical data rather than supposition.
NCEER is creating the intellectual infrastructure needed to carry out and evaluate large-scale experiments in engineering education. As part of their education, Northwestern students will have the opportunity to be participants both in evaluating innovations and helping researchers develop new innovations.
NCEER aspires to be the leading research community investigating engineering thought and how best to cultivate ‘adaptive expertise’ in students.
