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 An interview with Linda Jones
I: Let's talk about how people see engineering. I'm always impressed when I see the breadth of each of the disciplines within engineering, but I'm not sure people outside the profession realize the role engineering plays in society or why Smith is placing so much emphasis on it. How do you talk about engineering to people who aren't in the profession?
LJ: I think the first important thing to realize is that engineering impacts everything you do every day, from the ballpoint or gel pen that you might be using to recognizing that on any given Friday afternoon the power may dampen down, to what choices you have in makeup or eyewear.
I: The hip that may need a ceramic replacement . . .
LJ: Absolutely. The whole concept of biomedical devices is that they must be engineered to be more compatible with human tissue and movements. Our world is becoming increasingly more complex from the standpoint of interpersonal, cultural, and societal concerns. And very often those societal issues have a physical need that must also be addressed to achieve resolution. Those needs--whether it's cleaning water or air, producing goods, or moving people--require a society that is well versed in the impact and implications of those technical issues.
I: That seems like a stretch from where we are now.
LJ: It shouldn't be a class issue. Everyone is affected, and the fact that we're raising children who are mathematically illiterate is extraordinary. It shouldn't just be the wealthy training and urging their children to address social needs. We are doing a lot in the laboratories and universities and biotech industries; there's a great deal of fundamental science being done and invention taking place. On the other end, there are these human needs. What's really great about engineering is that engineers are the people who can bring inventions and resources and technology to bear on human needs. Educators tend to put engineering schools in a different sphere, apart from other disciplines; ideally, engineers should be at the absolute interface of these social and political conversations. I think that is what's so exciting about the Picker program--it recognizes the full role of the engineering profession. Smith is teaching women that role, the one that will be the future of engineering.
I: Do you sense that this broader educational approach is gaining momentum, that there's a shift, or are some people thinking about engineering this way because they would address many subjects from a sociopolitical and ethical point of view?
LJ: I think the interdisciplinary approach is gaining momentum. I believe that people are recognizing that some of the most significant advances we've made involve not just the sequestered researcher but an individual or individuals who understand technology or have a deep technical background and also know how that technical background fits societal needs. Those individuals must communicate knowledge or discovery in such a way that people who may not have that technical background can embrace those tools and use them.
What is happening in the electronics of computers is pretty profound. The synthesis of the chips is amazing. The materials involved and the advances in materials are phenomenal, and through the development of that infrastructure, what we've done is allowed millions of people to take advantage of a tool that's dramatically expands what any one person can do.
I: Yet we are impatient if the machine doesn't boot up quickly enough.
LJ: We continue to demand more and more of computing; we want it to run faster and faster. That's the technical side. Way back when, people like Bill Gates were able to rig this enormous box so it could begin to do really remarkable things. I think we're still seeing remarkable things that can happen with this tool as it evolves. And we feel comfortable with it. That's one example of an interface having happened, a tool that we now accept as part of daily life.
I: I have a quote from Thomas Watson, who once asked why anybody would want something like a computer in their home. It's one of those of those great, "wish I hadn't said that" comments.
LJ: When we look back at what IBM had done to get their first-generation computers and their very clear desire for that tool, their original purpose was to do payroll, financial, and business transactions. So they pushed that computer along and got it to a place where companies could afford it. It was probably the size of this whole office, and it performed simple calculating of payrolls and printing. At that point, I'm sure there were very few visionaries who could have seen other things that machine could do. But developing ideas is often an incremental process, and I think that's the place the 21 st century engineer-- someone who is no longer solving somebody else's problems but is learning to identify problems on their own, really recognizing needs. Then they must have the technical literacy to understand how to address those needs.
I: That's an exciting function.
LJ: It's a big reach. A new approach to education has to come into play, and it has to be harbored in an institution that fosters both technical literacy and the wider vision to identify problems that engineering can effectively address. A student has to handle differential equations and really get into computational mathematics rigorously. She also needs to know how to write a well-orchestrated letter or understand issues to a degree where she can work with a variety of other creative people. Not all of us have the ability to access both our left and right brain or want to train ourselves to do so.
I: When I interviewed graduating students, a couple of them said that initially they were a little afraid that Picker was too general a program or that they were taking a risk against peers. At the end of the program, they believe they got the better education at Smith, but how do you present a program where there is more time allowed for courses that would not necessarily be part of a traditional engineering curriculum?
LJ: Smith offers a BS in engineering science, a degree that's offered at many institutions; at Penn State or Cornell, for instance, you can choose to do engineering science. It's a curriculum that gives you the essence of many degrees; it is really a foundation drawn from several engineering specialties. When you take engineering science, you are taking the more difficult classes in each of the areas that are considered classical disciplines, like mechanical engineering.
For example, in mechanical engineering, you would have to take mechanics and materials, which you also take at Smith. The difference is that if you focused solely on mechanical engineering, you would take several technical electives in your senior and junior years that are specific to mechanical engineering. At Smith, you could choose to do some of those technical electives and still have room for courses in other areas.
At Smith, you are taking a classical degree--engineering science--in an environment that really emphasizes the humanities. In any engineering program, you're going to have to take humanities, and you have to be able to write. But at Smith, there's an emphasis on interdisciplinary work; at other institutions you fit it in where you can. At some institutions, you take philosophy because it's a 300-level lecture and a 300-person lecture and you can get a seat. By intention, that's not the case here.
We want to work strategically with the students. For example, with all the engineering interest in Japan and China, a student might want to take an engineering science degree and include courses in Japanese or Chinese language or culture, or the philosophies of those cultures. In other words, we want to build components around the engineering degree that make that degree even more fully functional.
I think the point that the students you interviewed are probably making is that they didn't feel they got in as deep as they possibly can, but the reality is that they are doing the right things. The purpose of the undergraduate degree is to teach you to think critically and learn to think independently--to learn how to learn. It takes time for most students to recognize that. If you really wanted to get very deeply or intensively into biomedical engineering, you couldn't do that in an undergraduate degree no matter where you went to school. You have to go on to graduate level to really get into specific areas.
My position is that no matter what discipline you eventually choose, the undergraduate degree is teaching you how to learn to learn. How do you begin to pose a question? How do you think through a problem to solve it? I would argue that no matter where you go, the goal of the undergraduate degree is encompassed in engineering science. It really is he most challenging curriculum, because whether you personally like an area or not, you have to do it all!
I: Like having distribution requirements?
LJ: Distribution requirements exist because faculty members thought they were necessary to the well-rounded students liberal arts colleges try to shape. I think the sort of student we're trying to shape at Smith is one who can get out there and not only do the technical work but take on a whole array of multifaceted problems whose solutions cross all sorts of disciplines. I don't mean that they will solve big problems independently, but that they can sort out how to approach the problem, decide when they need to work with a larger team, whom they need as colleagues, how to present their case for support.
I: When we interviewed the Smith NASA team last year, we heard a striking example of their ability to work well because everyone knew all aspects of both experiments. Their equipment arrived at the space center smashed to bits, and they had too rebuild in a matter of hours. Because they had made friends, some other teams helped them out, as did the NASA officials. At the end of the week, the team from Wisconsin told them that Smith's was the first team they had met in three years who greeted everybody, knew the other teams by the end of the week, and showed an attitude that encouraged others to pitch in and help. LJ: That's a brilliant example of how an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach is working well. You've probably heard of ABET, the accreditation body for applied science, computing, engineering, and technology education?
ABET has been instrumental in a revolutionary change that began with what they call ABET 2000. They developed and disseminated specific qualities or experiences--they call them outcomes--that all students should demonstrate by or within five years from graduation. One of those objectives is the ability to work in multidisciplinary teams. That doesn't mean that as an electrical engineer can work only with other electrical engineers. It means that you have to be able to work with designers, artists, distributors, corporate managers, community or political leaders--people coming from many different backgrounds. ABET requires evidence that your students can do that. (ABET outcomes are listed at the end of this interview.)
You have to be broadly educated enough to talk to multiple constituencies, share your knowledge base so you can help them. The bottom line is to be helpful, to really help. That's what the 21 st century engineer needs to be, a Renaissance person.
I: That harks back to Leonardo, right?
LJ: Yes, Da Vinci had the critical appreciation of machines, design, beauty of form, and art. He was able to live and work well in very broad communities, so he traveled widely and had people funding his work from all over the world. There were competing interests, perhaps, but he was able to manage these things in such a way that it furthered his interests and his creativity. I think that's a good description of what an engineer should aim to become.
I: Can we talk a little bit about how you got here and the person you are now. How did you get into engineering? Were your parents instrumental; I often hear that from women who enter less traditional fields.
LJ: Yes, I think many of us are affected by fathers who encourage daughters along a different path and mothers who perhaps weren't enabled or allowed to be in these fields. If it weren't for our mothers, we wouldn't have been able to pursue careers in male-dominated fields. They allowed us to do that.
My father was a test pilot in the Navy, so from the time I was a small child, I had always been around planes and engines and remarkable machines. I was just thrilled to see and be a part of all that. My life was that of the Navy brat following my father around and seeing his planes. I think that exposure was very exciting. When I entered college, I was very interested in science and math, but the whole engineering thing was not something I thought I would be able to do or had even thought about. I actually got my undergraduate degree in chemistry at a liberal arts college, a woman's college. I think that shaped me a bit. Then I went to work in industry as a propellant chemist in the development of rockets. It was a lot of fun, but it was very clear to me that this was not a field I wanted to stay in. It was about making explosives in bays where the walls were all cement except for the back walls, which were blowout walls. You were putting materials into bowls and mixing, and if there was an accident, it could be very serious. If you travel down to the Brandywine region, you'll see the same sort of buildings, because the Duponts were very involved in making gunpowder for the American Revolution. They had wooden blowout walls in the early days; ours were thick blue composite board so the explosion would go out through those weaker walls. I had seen a couple of accidents and didn't want to continue doing that work.
I explored what degrees were out there, I had done enough thinking, and I met people who had gotten different degrees. Because I was working fuels and propellants, I ended up at Penn State and took my Ph.D. in fuel science. In doing that, my experience making propellants crossed over at a time when funding was available in the area of understanding materials for use in leading edges of planes and nozzles. It was serendipity. My resume crossed the desk of my Ph.D. advisor just as he had gotten funding to study carbon/carbon composites; they are the materials that failed on the shuttle recently. All my work has been looking at highly energetic materials and how they interplay with carbon/carbon, carbons and certain carbides. These are architectures; they're actually braided fiber that has become a ceramic. This piece on my desk is silicon carbide fiber reinforced with silicon carbides. It's like your cereal bowl, except that it's purposefully designed and braided. I can put it in very hot environment, and it will retain its properties. The great thing about carbon/carbon is that it's the only material known that gets stronger as you heat it.
But carbon/carbons do have the problems of degrading, as we saw with the space shuttle. What happened was, there was a very hard film of silicon carbide with fractures surrounding. You can imagine that if something hit it hard enough, it would break and expose the substructure. Carbons are amazing. We can throw a piece of wood into the fireplace. It's carbon, and we want it to burn. But it also has a great deal of structural integrity, so it's one of those magical materials with an Achilles heel that needs to be considered. I got very interested in ceramics because all of the things that we put on carbon/carbon for protection are ceramics. I decided that I was really interested in teaching as well as research. And that's about the time I found it.
I: Found it ?
LJ: My previous position at Alfred University. One of my colleagues said, "You know, before you go to B.U. or wherever, why don't you check out Alfred? The search is still open, and it's worth a look." I thought there was no way I would go to such a remote place, but when I went there, I was really taken with the people and the remarkable facilities. So I went to work building their program.
I: It's different to be able to have an impact and get things done when you're not working in a huge institution.
LJ: That's right. What was nice at Alfred was that the emphasis was on teaching, a value I always thought was appropriate at a college or university, though it is not necessarily the case in many institutions these days with so much demand for research. Alfred still values teaching, so it was a nice mix.
I: So you have found your way through a lot of choices, experiences that would be very helpful in an undergraduate institution where students are still undecided.
LJ: I've been fortunate that I've had choices to make. Not everyone has that opportunity.
I: One of our students said in a video exit interview, "I'm still thinking about becoming a rabbi. Most rabbis can't be engineers, but I'm an engineer, and I can still be a rabbi as well."
LJ: That would be great. I would think that would be a profound experience, having this technical ability to add to whatever she chose to do.
I: I find the alchemy aspect of this fascinating, having developed the ability to think through and change something in such a profound way that you create something else. Not many people get to do that. Very few people create something new.
LJ: On an animistic level. That's what materials engineering is today, to be able to understand how to develop new combinations. When I put elements together, what I'm doing is on an electronic atomic crystal level, a microstructure shape level. I think part of the architecture [of this object on my desk] is that this has been braided. This one was braided by hand.
It's braided by hand so you get this thickness and then it's put into a reactor filled with a gas, heated, and deposited to yield the ceramic. All sorts of processes occur that you wouldn't have thought of to build a ceramic. It's a great field.
That's another thing that's important about having an engineering science degree. Say a student ends up in senior year having been in mechanical engineering and decides that she wants to get into materials, a field that is very important when you're building bridges today. You need to understand what choices there are in materials; it's a part of mechanical engineering. What's nice about an engineering science degree is that you've been able not just to sample but to work quite thoroughly in these different areas, so you've got the basis for a change. You could step into electrical, mechanical, materials; you could make those any of those choices at the end of your bachelor's degree. Yes, you're going to have to do a little extra work, but you have great flexibility.
I: Extra work doesn't seem to faze most people here.
LJ: I think students here would welcome that challenge. I think it's a great degree to have. It's really enabling because it continues to allow you to make more choices about your career.
I: It's interesting to hear students say that they had some trepidation about a women's college but came because Smith offers such a rigorous education. That's number one. They recognize that they will have to work hard in this place, but after that, they are ready for almost anything.
LJ: Nothing should hold you back. I think the fact that this is a women's college means you don't have to deal on a daily basis with the simple fact of being a woman. You're just another person in that classroom; the college was designed for you. That is not the case at other undergraduate institutions.
I: Can you speak to the issue of what it is that keeps or removes women from the profession?
LJ: You don't see women at the highest levels, but I think that is changing. The reason they aren't there today is tied to access to opportunity, the opportunity to have the same kinds of training and education as men, to take the same sorts of jobs early on. I think that when you see a dearth of women engineers, it's because a woman simply could not follow up completely on her degree. It's not unlike other professional degrees, like a law degree. In the Fifties and Sixties, if you got your degree, you still faced barriers. Sandra Day O'Connor was tops in her class, yet she couldn't enter a firm on the same basis as a man. She had to be good at clerical work first, even with the degree.
I: So those barriers have remained longer in engineering?
LJ: I think engineering is still perceived as a man's field.
The other aspect of barriers that I want to mention is the function of opportunity: the opportunity to be trained, to get the same kind of training as men, to be put in the same sorts of physical space. I think that range and quality of opportunities have been very limited in the past. We're certainly making progress in that area; we no longer condone keeping women from those opportunities. But I think there is perhaps a more profound thing that continues to take place, and that is that each and every one of us carries our own bias, if that's not too strong a word. Our perceptions of women and men continue to be shaped by society's biases, so that women are still up against artificial restrictions. There was that interesting study done by a woman at New York University that showed the resumes of two candidates to both men and women. What the investigator saw clearly was that both the women and the men were biased against women. We all have our own inherent biases.
I: When I buy clothing for my granddaughter, most of the choices are pink with ruffles. This is who you are; this is how you should be dressed. The pressure is there from birth. Girls start to drop out of science and engineering in elementary school.
LJ: Yes, oh yes, because socially, for a girl, you don't want to be an engineer. She's smart. You want to wear a hard hat? Girls don't wear hard hats. Girls don't behave like that! I think we still do that to young girls today, though we're making strides. The space shuttle launched with a woman pilot--that's profound change.
I: It's a far cry from the days of training women astronauts and then excluding them from the flights.
LJ: What we do culturally to women still goes unspoken. Restrictions are not necessarily coming from points of authority, but they exist within the home, in what you expect girls to wear, how you expect girls to be, what you expect young women to become. Somehow, engineering still has the flavor of being male-oriented and not particularly a field that women should enter. Maybe that colors women's choices when they're in eighth, ninth, or tenth grade. I can't tell you how many times I was disappointed to get the doll when my brothers had the trains.
I: My women friends in their early sixties laugh about wanting gift certificates from Home Depot and wish they knew how to use power tools. Many of us have homes and wish that learning how to fix things had been part of what everyone needs to know.
LJ: I think the culture piece is huge. What was really fantastic about last year were Lawrence Sommer's statements. In a way it's unfortunate that he made those statements--even more unfortunate if he believes what he was saying.
I: He's said the comments were made to spark a discussion. It just didn't sound that way.
LJ: He was putting this idea up and it has started a bigger conversation. One of the things I think was most outrageous was his argument that there are actual gender differences in the way we assimilate technical information. I do believe that the cultural piece is an important point. We're making strides. I think the more we realize that we all have inherent biases and address them in ourselves, the closer we'll get to eliminating them. We all want to believe that we are open-minded. I think it's really worthwhile to do some self-examination.
I: What kinds of things have you done or do you see that might be of interest to students who aren't in the engineering program? Should you think that because you're an English major you have need to learn science? You can't be educated and scientifically illiterate, so how do we develop scientific literacy?
LJ: I consider myself a materials engineer. I'm really interested in what things are made of and how they're made. What makes glass different from this coffee cup? Why can I see through that, and I can't see through this? What gets most people excited about science is that, as a child, they were looking around and questioning everything they saw. You know, what's that bug in the water about? Or just looking for its own sake.
I think we all need to do more stopping and looking and thinking, pausing--really looking and thinking. Does the English major question what material she's writing on, where that material comes from and what treatment it goes through before she uses it? What is it that we're working with, who manufactured it, how did they get the weight and finish in the high-quality paper. You know, you have to really see it.
I had a student in the art program who did an independent study with me, and she's interested in restoration work. She wanted to look closely at paper and the different sorts of fiber in paper. So we showed her how to use a scanning electron microscope. She looked at different types of paper, the materials in the paper, the shape of the fibers in the paper. She spent time looking at and asking questions about something that's so ubiquitous we don't even consider it. If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good observer. I think science is about observing. So we're all the same beast; we just decide to take it to one extreme or another.
I: I'm interested in your comment about the pace and the complexity of our lives today. That's also a concern of President Christ's. Having grown up in another time in a somewhat rural area, I don't believe in the value of multi-tasking. Research shows that you lose concentration every time you shift gears to do something else. I don't know accept the inherent value of speed unless a bear is chasing you, but there seems to be value attached to being able to everything faster. You seem to be very reflective, and obviously you have a very busy life. How do you hold onto your own pace?
LJ: I really force myself to listen and look. I'm really a believer in that. And I think reverence for speed is really unfortunate and speaks to how object-oriented we all are. We want the latest DVD player. We want this; we want that. We spend a great deal of time gathering, but relatively little time actually reading and using what we have. That's why most of us could pare down some and still have more than enough.
It troubles me that young people see little value in science. And unfortunately I think we do a great job of turning them off in eighth, ninth, tenth grade in high school. We make the subject of science so rote rather than allowing the student to start questioning and driving some of the conversation through their own inquiry. We package science so that there's an outcome they should all have. Science is so often canned; they get ten-minute sound bites. We're all trained to absorb ten-minute sound bites rather than spending an afternoon reading and making some notes. Deliberative process is not in the way we educate, unfortunately.
I think educational changes have to happen to create these individuals that I'm talking about, these Renaissance people. We need to train engineers to communicate well, to write clearly and effectively and put their work in a context that non-engineers can access. I think that's really important.
I: We are talking a lot about the new science and engineering building, and it will be a great space. But what goes on in the building is the most important part of the planning. The building will allow us to teach in a way that's different or that is somewhat hindered now by the space we have. Can you speak about that aspect?
LJ: The light comes from the people within. The design of the building gives people a chance to have a conversation in common places and spaces. When we were talking about the speed of life and world, I thought about the fact that we've lost the art of conversation. You know, just stopping to ask a colleague or student what are you doing in your work? Let's have a cup of tea and talk about it and share thoughts. More and more, we're losing that kind of opportunity. We don't create time where we can do that. We're so often separated by space that we don't have crossroads where we bump into each other.
Creating those crossroads in the new science and engineering facilities is a very important thing for students and faculty, and for faculty interacting with students. To do things outside the classroom is so important, even something as simple as stopping to ask how are you? Or asking if a student needs help when you spot a solemn look on a face. That moment is a great way to find out that a student didn't understand the assignment and was afraid to ask. If you don't have the crossroads, you're not going to have those chances.
Those crossroads would be especially effective in relating to a subject you might never see involved with engineering, say women's studies. Wouldn't it be fantastic for someone from women's studies to interface on a regular basis with engineering? Or for the women engineers to understand that all women's history is important in terms of their own growth? How do we foster that kind of exposure? I'm trying to get my head around how we do that.
I: Some of the students I've interviewed mentioned that they like the fact that they meet people beyond their houses, in the labs and classes, because there's an interesting mix of students from various areas. One woman said, "I have as many friends because of this engineering program as I do because of where I live." That's a good thing, because so many spend hours and hours in the labs!
LJ: I could make an argument that that's not the case at other institutions, where you get in and you get out of that lab as quickly as possible. There's very little conversation. So if those expanded conversations are already happening here at Smith, that's really fantastic.
I: The labs seem to create groups of people you bond with because you've done such intensive work with them, which is a marvelous way to know people.
LJ: It seems as though Smith is a small enough community to focus on not moving engineering six miles away from everyone else. They're keeping it very much a part of the campus. I think that's a wise decision in terms Smith's growth and to keep Smith a place of shared conversations. If we were to separate an engineering campus as many other institutions do, we would lose something.
I remember hearing about the Picker program a few years ago when it first got off the ground. The philosophy of it spoke to my own interests, this notion of a broadly educated engineer. It's not a widely embraced concept, although ABET is making it more important. I thought it was fantastic that Smith is working actively and has the opportunity to build something from the ground up. I had read about the program, saw Domenico Grasso's comments about his job, and thought that's a cat's meow job. When I saw the job opening, I was certainly not looking. But I thought, I'll kick myself 20 years down the road if I don't apply.
Even in the process of applying, which I thought would be a quick letter, I started to think about why I was so interested. It's wonderful that I'm here now; I never thought it would happen when I was reading about the program.
I: Well, we're glad to have you here as the director and a role model. I think you'll find the students marvelous. You see people with such varied interests--a master violinist who's also an engineer. Watching the Picker program continue to develop will be exciting.
In summer 2005, the Picker Engineering Program was accredited by ABET, retroactive to the first graduating class. To receive accreditation, the engineering program had to demonstrate that graduates have...
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An ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering |
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An ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data |
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An ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability |
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An ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams |
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An ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems |
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An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility |
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An ability to communicate effectively |
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The broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context |
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A recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning |
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A knowledge of contemporary issues |
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