(D) From Ponifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 3, 2000

Rio de Janeiro, 3 September 2000

Dear Win

Congratulations for your efforts in organizing the continuation of the ICEEs, always looking for the best mechanisms to do so.

I would like to give you some insights, asking you to pass along this message to the other steering committee members.

The ICEEs started in Taiwan, mostly as a Chinese - American endeavor devoted to Engineering Education. The conference in Washington D.C.(1996) was very much connected to the ASEE meeting that occurred at the same time. This was a kind of first moment of the ICEEs.

A second moment started in Chicago (1997), when the ICEE's became really an International event. The "Partnership for Development" motivation started a period when collaborations was understood as an important mechanism for improvement of Engineering Education. This moment coincided with the maturity of the American Coalitions of Schools of Engineering, a symbol of partnership. The conference in Rio (1998) extended the concept of partnership to the several possible alliances between industry and Schools of Engineering, government and Schools of Engineering, Civil Society and Schools of Engineering, the rest of the University and the School of Engineering and so on. The Prague conference (1999) extended the area of the conference to Eastern Europe, keeping the concept of partnership. The recent conference in Taipei (2000) saw the onset of the iNEER, an important network to keep alive the partnerships started during the conference and the results of the conference in the period in between ICEEs; besides, from the key note speeches, panels, session and workshops, I think that we can wrap a few philosophical aspects of Engineering Education, connected to the present social and economic realities (I do not expect to be complete in the following list):

1. Students need more cultural background
2. Students must develop communications skills
3. Students must learn team working
4. The future professional must develop international view
5. The University Industry interactions must cover either the areas of applied research and of Engineering Education
6. The concept of projects must develop into design and hands-on techniques connected with the productive sector could be an important mechanism to help these matters
7. The freshman and sophomore years need specific treatments in order to help students to adapt to the university environment.

I understand that we are starting a third moment of deeper maturity of the conference. The positive results of such conferences to the community of engineering educators, in particular to the host country, became obvious by the growing number of candidates to host ICEEs. In this third moment, I understand that general statements involving the above list or other items are useful only to be brought to police makers, but not to be hammered on ourselves. During the ICEEs 97 to 2000, we could see a growing number of papers with real results measured in reaching some of the goals above mentioned. I understand that from Oslo to the next conferences we should focus on:

1. Papers, panels and workshops involving the presentation of sounding results
2. Key note speeches involving deeper analyses of the new realities (as we had during ICEE2000), but directed to help the community to built a set of recommendations to agencies interested in the subjects and also to industries
3. Preparing the said recommendations
4. Preparing regional conferences under the iNEER and ICEE logo, directed to discuss locally these recommendations and also intending to reach more schools of engineering than can be reached by th ICEEs.

Specifically to the next ICEE in Norway, I think that panels and workshops with results should be organized and the presentation of techniques in use should be encourage. Also, typical results of partnerships and alliances should also be presented.

Well, those are thoughts to be discussed. Thank you for your attention.

Yours,

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