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THE ENGINEERING EDUCATION MODEL AT
ITA:
HISTORICAL REVIEW, PRESENT STATUS AND CHALLENGES
ABSTRACT
The Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) was founded by the Air Ministry, in 1950, in order to provide for the necessary Engineering manpower to establish an autonomous aeronautical industry in Brazil. At the time, the educational system implemented was innovative and outstanding, according to Brazilian standards. Over the years, various factors contributed to the establishment of a practically permanent state of crisis, affecting faculty and students, and requiring new approaches to uphold the high professional standard of ITA graduates. The paper describes the situation up to the present, suggests a radical strategy to overcome current difficulties and prepare students for the future market, and analyses the challenges the institute will face.
THE PAST
The Brazilian Government took the first steps to establish an autonomous air power in 1939, with the creation of the first course in aeronautical engineering in the country. Once the necessary faculty and laboratories were not available locally, students were sent abroad after being selected and prepared at the Escola Técnica do Exército in Rio de Janeiro, today Instituto Militar de Engenharia. With the creation of the Ministério da Aeronáutica in 1941, all the interests relative to aviation, both military and civilian, were concentrated in a single organism.
The newly born Ministry of Aeronautics started to develop an autonomous capacity to minister courses in order to prepare and to graduate Aeronautical Engineers by using its own means. Professors were hired and equipment was bought in the US and Europe. While there were no conditions to be in full control, the Ministry of Aeronautics maintained the courses in Rio de Janeiro.
Following recommendations outlined by MIT Professor Richard Smith, the Ministry of Aeronautics decided to integrate all educational and research facilities, in all fields which pertained to aeronautics at professional level, both civilian and military, in one geographical location and in one legal organization - the Centro Técnico de Aeronáutica (CTA), later renamed Centro Técnico Aeroespacial, installed in São José dos Campos, São Paulo.
The first of CTA's institutes, the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA), was installed in 1950, as the Engineering School with the mission of: a) educating and training specialized professionals, at undergraduate, graduate and specialization levels and, b) conducting research, in advanced technology, particularly in the areas of aerospace interest.
During the late 40's, 50's an 60's, US universities, in particular MIT and Michigan University, were invited and collaborated in creating the first courses in Aeronautical and Electronic Engineering, and later Mechanical Engineering, by supplying experienced lecturers that, together with selected local professionals, implemented an educational system, at the time innovative according to Brazilian standards. This system was based on:
ITA was the first engineering school organized in Departments at a time when all Universities used a rigid discipline chair structure. ITA was also the first (and only) school to hold entrance examinations nation wide. This much broader base of selection together with the full schollarship policy enabled ITA to attract the most skilled applicants in the country. The small numbers policy, the whole community living on the same "campus", the counselling system and emphasis on ethic constituted the proper environment to educate the man, while training the professional. ITA was also the first engineering course in Brazil to develop graduate activities. At first, the objective was to prepare young faculty members for further studies abroad. Later on, these activities were formalized into graduate courses to train talented faculty applicants and the needed aerospace research manpower. Not being tied to the Ministry of Education, gave ITA the much needed flexibility and speed to effectively manage the curricula. These were discussed and approved on an yearly basis, as opposed to a five-year or more period needed for changes in other universities. The Fundamental Course curriculum for all students at ITA (first two years of study) emphasized basic sciences (Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry), computing and humanities. The full scholarship also enabled ITA to establish a student full time, full dedication policy with around sixty hours weekly work, half spent at classrooms and labs, half at the dorms.
This led to ethical, responsible and disciplined graduates, with initiative, solid basic knowledge and ability to learn continuously and communicate well, capable of solving conceptual engineering problems and leading engineering groups as well as occupying high positions in administration. All these attributes were welcome by the Brazilian manpower market, driven by the government-sponsored rapid growth of industry and by the establishment of several other R&D and teaching centres.
During the 70's, Brazil experienced a fast growth in communications and technological progress, and generous financial resources for R&D projects and graduate training were made available, both by government agencies and companies. The consequences at ITA were unavoidable:
During this period, management of the engineering courses was certainly inadequate. The engineering curricula were extended in course work-hours and experienced an inflation of technical disciplines, with cuts in engineering design and humanities, and courses became more science-oriented. No steps were taken to integrate undergraduates in R&D projects and undergraduate activities were relegated to a second plan. This and the lack of contact with the "real" environment outside the "campus" reduced engineering design to mere paperwork, and caused a major impact on the original educational system. The students overall interest declined and the time spent at the "campus" diminished, with consequences on their homework effort and in their involvement in parallel social, cultural and sport activities. The "honour code" started showing some weaknesses, and students preferred to work more individually than in groups.
Lectures were still delivered the traditional way, and ITA graduates were still well prepared to proceed with advanced studies, to learn continuously and to solve Engineering problems. However, the ability to communicate well and to lead groups became impaired, and the praise of ethic and responsibility values were not uniformly distributed anymore, with consequences on the chances of occupying higher administrative positions.
This trend had already been felt around the second half of the 70's. In an attempt to change it, ITA made agreements with industries and R&D establishments to provide solutions to their technical problems through cooperation programmes. The first, and probably the most successful, of these agreements was signed with the recently created R&D centre of Telebrás, the Brazilian telecommunications holding. The general subject of the agreement was data communication, an emerging issue at the time, and covered the theoretical study of packet switching and the development of equipment that, on completion, should be transferred to industry for production and sale to the Telebrás system. The choice of the equipment was left to ITA to decide, and Embratel, the Brazilian long-distance carrier, was approached to find out their needs, resulting in the development of a telegraph multiplexer in accordance with the CCITT R.101B recommendation. An operating prototype was built in one year and transferred to a Brazilian industry that, after some product engineering work, included it in their product list and, as planned, was able to sell it both to Telebrás and abroad. Unfortunately, the data communication programme at ITA was discontinued shortly therafter, mainly because higher salaries made lecturers involved join either the Telebrás R&D centre or the industry. Due to internal bureaucratic difficulties and decisions based on questionable policies, other cooperation programmes also declined, and this important activity was practically stopped by the mid 80's, the only contact with the outside world being kept by students during their final-year project.
The 80's and early 90's were characterized by the creation of the course in Computer Engineering and a lasting economical crisis. Because of low wages, many faculty members searched for better jobs elsewhere and many retired. Although faculty wages recovered in the late 80's, hiring replacements was prohibited by federal government. As a consequence, the faculty staff size, which reached its peak in the mid 80's, shrinked to 60% in the early 90's. In the same period, no investment in equipment was made and labs quickly turned obsolete.
The situation, in 1992, was as bad as possible: minimal budget, with no investment capacity, obsolete labs, "inflated" curricula, insufficient faculty, obsolete pedagogical approaches, no contact with the outside world and low student and faculty motivation.
THE PRESENT
Since 1993, a number of actions were developed in an attempt to overcome the above mentioned crisis.
The curricula were "deflated" an average of 15% of total course work, with a corresponding increase in homeworks, aiming to give students more active working/thinking time. Some specialized disciplines were dropped and course load was lowered. The process was conducted on a slow but continuous pace, however, no major restructuring was undertaken.
The annual budget was substantially increased and the Ministry of Aeronautics agreed to provide half of the needed financial resources. In order to provide for the rest, faculty were incentivated to apply for official grants and to develop partnerships with industries. A fair capacity of investment was thus established. Nevertheless, budget is still insufficient, and investments are not carried out uniformly. There are labs that are completely up-to-date and others that are still obsolete.
Partnerships with industries, like IBM, AT&T and Procomp, were established to develop and use computer-based teaching aids. Under the ITA-PRODENGE-REENGE project sponsored by the Brazilian financing agency FINEP, group projects and computer-aided learning activities in Physics and Mathematics are being currently developed and tested, to evaluate their ability to stimulate creativity and initiative, and increase learning efficiency. First-year student groups compete on small Engineering projects, like building and throwing boomerangs and building model racing cars powered by air-filled rubber balloons, and use the softwares Mathematica and Interactive Physics for simulations and problem-solving. In Mathematics, students use the software Mathematica, and a course on Experimental Mathematics is presently being developed to provide students with an alternative insight into the subject. Physics and Mathematics lecturers are using Microsoft PowerPoint to deliver lectures, and HTML and ToolBook are being used to generate complementary study material. Bureaucratic and financial difficulties have been delaying the process, and conclusive data about the effectiveness of these methods will only be available in about one year, but preliminary results obtained through student interviews indicate a positive trend.
Students were motivated to create a "junior engineering consulting firm" where, under faculty supervision, they should be able to gain global insight: business administration, marketing, project management etc. Students were also motivated to edit a scientific journal, to apply for grants that forster an initiation in scientific research, and to participate in a number of projects, as the Mini Baja contest and the natural fiber glider.
Close relationships with the Alumni Association and its Foundation were established and medium term perspectives look good. The Casimiro Montenegro Filho Foundation was recently declared "of public utility", paving the way to enable it to receive tax incentive monies. ITA alumni are motivated and engaged in the process of establishing an investment fund, similar to those very common in the US.
In spite of these actions, one must concede that most of the above mentioned crisis remains. As a profession, engineering is not as valued by the market as in the past. Many of ITA's graduates are hired by banks, the financial market and management consulting companies. It has thus been very difficult to motivate students to give their best and to engage in extra-curricular activities. On the other hand, faculty wages have been frozen since the implementation of the last economic plan (Plano Real) and the old days of government financing federal educational institutions are definitively gone. Part of the faculty is thus also not as motivated as one would desire.
One must not overlook the fact that ITA has to excel, otherwise it wouldn't justify its existence. In round figures, an ITA student costs an average of US$ 100,000 to graduate, one of the highest costs in the country, most of it paid by the Brazilian society. Being able to select the best available applicants in the country and delivering engineers having an average of more than two job offers at graduation isn't enough. The education should be developed up to the students potential. In Brazil, there are schools that enroll students with much less potential which are able to do a much better relative job.
However, global economy, fast technological advances, social transformations, production and management changes, and future market needs are over-shadowing the present crisis and presenting much bigger challenges.
THE FUTURE
For what follows, it is important to depict some peculiarities. ITA is a small school: there are aproximately 120 faculty members, 500 undergraduate, 500 graduate and 200 continuing education students. The ratio of applicants to enrolled students in engineering courses has varied from 30 to 40 in the last decades. The selection is based on an extensive entrance examination (4 days) on Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Geometry and Drawing, Portuguese and English, held nationwide. Therefore, almost every single ITA student has always been the first of his elementary and high school classes, and the implications on his personality should be easy to understand (praised by the family, the smart boy in town etc.).
Most of the students, when they enroll at ITA at age 17 or 18, don't really have yet built their expectations for professional life. In principle, therefore, it should eventually be possible to direct or influence these expectations. In the last two decades, though, that has not been the case. The determinant factors for building expectations have been market trends, general culture and life experience.
ITA graduates have been praised by the market since its creation and, as pointed out earlier, not only for engineering jobs. The percentages of ITA alumni that a) got an advanced academic degree, and b) that are working abroad, are top in the country.
At present, disregarding those intending to continue their studies at graduate level, the vast majority of last year students at ITA expects to fill management positions as soon as possible in their professional lives. It is therefore understandable that it isn't very easy to motivate them for engineering design and advanced technical disciplines. They just work the minimum necessary not to fail in the course.
To be successful, an engineering school should be able to graduate professionals that will satisfy society's needs, without overlooking their expectations. Presently, at ITA, it is quite clear that emphasis shouldn't be put on engineering design and technical specialization. If, for any reason, that should be stressed, the whole selection process would have to be changed.
The next question to be answered is about what profile Brazilian starting engineers will be required to have in the next 5 to 10 years, compatible with ITA student profile. Although no definite answer seems to be available, there are some indications that technical knowledge will become less important than skills and abilities. Among these, the ability to participate in group work and exercise leadership, to communicate well, to perform synthesis (as a complement to analysis), to think strategically and learn continuously emerge as strong requirements. On the technical side, Engineering problems are becoming, more and more, multi-disciplinary, requiring engineers with a broader knowledge basis and the ability to devise unusual solutions to optimize cost/benefit ratios.
This may mean that greater emphasis should be placed on an integrated view of the various Engineering specialities and to basic and human sciences, including English, Economy, Law, Psychology, Sociology, Politics and Ecology, and to the development of skills as opposed to technical specialization.
A possible strategy to achieve this goal is to merge all Engineering specialities into a single broad course (taking Medicine as a paradigm), leaving technical deepening either to graduate studies or to professional life and continuing education courses. In this sense, all Engineering courses at ITA could be synthesized into an Aerospace Engineering course, with basic skills and knowledge being developed during, for example, four years, and leaving the fifth year, or part of it, to a final-year project with some degree of specialization.
THE CHALLENGES
The greatest challenge involved in a strategy as outlined above is that a major change in the faculty's conservative mentality may be required, with some effort put into changing the curriculum, to re-accomodate and expand the teaching of human sciences, to insert the teaching of the fundamentals and applications in Mechanics, Electronics, Information Technology and Materials, to reduce the teaching of technical details to a bare minimum, and into adopting innovative pedagogical methods to increase learning efficiency.
Today, the common basis for ITA engineers corresponds to roughly 50% of the curriculum total work load, with the following distribution (lecture and lab hours):
The remaining curriculum work load is reserved for the various Engineering specialities (fundamental concepts, theory and applications, advanced applications, free electives and final-year project). The suggested curriculum change would imply that all the specialized disciplines, presently required in the various curricula , would turn into free-electives. On the other hand, basic technical disciplines presently required in a specific speciality would have to be delivered to all students. This means that the audience for present required specialized disciplines will not be assured anymore, while the audience for basic technical courses would increase substantially. Faculty members that are used to deliver advanced coursed would have to adapt to provide the manpower for the increased demand on basic courses. It just isn't easy to get their needed agreement to approve the modified curriculum without strong arguments to answer the question: "If our graduates are so praised by the market, why risk such major changes?"
As to the use of computer-based teaching aids in this scheme, it should be pointed out that the majority of known experiences increase learning efficiency based on individuality, but are, at least potentially, detrimental to the development of the ability to communicate well and to perform group work, and to stimulate leadership and ethical behaviour. The development of computer-based activities without these drawbacks represents a challenge that could be alleviated by a careful mix with non-computer-based activities specifically designed to stimulate social skills on an ethical basis.
Restructuring and strategic planning of curricula, and its continuous adaptation to a dynamic market, may also represent a challenge. Since Engineering education at school takes five years, reliable medium-term projections of market needs, obtained through market research, become an important issue, together with the ability to react timely to market changes. Engineering teaching should be modelled as a modern production process: like raw or unfinished parts in store, skills and knowledge are valuable assets that deteriorate if not used, and, therefore, a term-based structure may not be the best curriculum arrangement. Alternatively, short, interleaved courses seem more efficient, and project management and industrial techniques, like PERT and JIT, could be used to advantage in curriculum planning and to control changes, despite those techniques being, normally, alien to academia.
The last, but non lesser challenge, is to implement these modifications in a scenario of diminishing public resources. The only possible way is doing it through partnerships. ITA should keep a permanent faculty staff to deliver the basic sciences and technical disciplines and leave the humanities for the partner, each one taking care of what they know best. ITA will also have to find its place, well balanced between the so called "research schools" and "teaching schools". On one hand, most of public and private monies are available to finance the first group of schools. On the other, one of ITA's most fundamental goals is the education of the "man" and the "citizen" and top researchers and scientists are not necessarily also good educators.
When the foregoing ideas are put into practice, it is expected that graduates from ITA will be entirely able to keep pace with the requirements of the rapidly changing world we live in.
THE TACTICS
The question, now, is how to go about doing it? Having identified that the greatest challenge is the faculty's conservative mentality, a gradual approach is recommended.
The first step is to restructure the Graduate School. The idea, here, is to merge all the present courses in a single one, on Aerospace Engineering. This single course (at the master and doctor levels) would have a number of concentration areas that would accommodate the various specialities, with the single provision that teaching and lines of research be conducted in the aerospace area of interest. This is also strategic in view of the scenario of diminishing public financial resources. To be able to get a share of these scarce resources, you must prove excellence in what you do. It is not possible to embrace the world, specially if you are very small. On the other hand, in the areas of aerospace interest there is presently almost no competition. Discussions are under way and it is believed that the Graduate School restructuring will be effective next year.
The next step would be the creation of the Aerospace Engineering course, as outlined above, as a separate "speciality", starting with a limited number of well selected students. The last step would be to close down the present specialities.
This approach would enable the community to discuss the subject thoroughly, and to evaluate the results before final commitment. It would also provide the necessary time for changing faculty's mentality. The main drawback of this approach is the time (7-8 years) needed for total implementation. Studies are currently under way to design a curriculum to be proposed to the Faculty Senate and the Ministry of Aeronautics.
A parallel line of action is being conducted to establish partnerships capable of fitting ITA's needs. The most important of these actions is a partnership with the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM) to create a joint MBA course. This course will strongly differ from most around the world, in the sense that equal emphasis shall be put on quantitative methods (ITA) and "humanities" (ESPM). In contrast with all present courses held at ITA, the MBA will be a paid course.
The partnership with ESPM will benefit ITA in a number of ways. First, it will have an impact on the technical "atmosphere" that currently prevails in the institute. Second, it will influence the teaching methods presently used by our faculty, specially concerning class dynamics and group activities, through the example given by ESPM lecturers while delivering their courses at ITA and through specific training of ITA's faculty. Finally, it will enable ITA to gradually insert the much needed humanities courses in its undergraduate curriculum without extra cost (these activities will be financed by the MBA revenues). A fringe benefit will be ESPM's free consulting for ITA's marketing needs.
Finally, ITA is conducting a policy to motivate its faculty to research and experiment on fresh teaching methods adequate to ITA students' profile. So far, no institutional directives have been issued and experiences have been conducted freely, ranging from special student tutoring schemes and group dynamics, to the use and development of a range of new teaching aids. No concrete results are available as yet, owing to the fact that this effort was only started last year.
CONCLUSION
Despite all difficulties, ITA produces high-quality engineers that, up to now, didn't find any difficulty in being placed in the market. However, an entirely new approach to the institute's curriculum and pedagogical process, and a renewed view at partnerships may be necessary to face the future and keep ITA graduates as top-ranking professionals. To implement the required changes, a gradual approach is suggested, mainly to overcome the resistance of conservative faculty members.