John Slaughter: Changing the Face of Engineering

John Slaughter presents two different ideas in his brief article. First, he states that no barriers should exist in becoming an engineer, in the sense that women and other minority groups should be strongly encouraged to purse that particular field. Consequently, the gap of these underrepresented groups will be filled, which will produce diversity and promote the growth of engineering. Secondly, he argues that the engineering curriculum should be drastically altered by the addition of more required liberal arts courses. This will increase each aspiring engineer’s appreciation for the humanities and will prevent him from becoming stereotypical narrow-minded engineer, since he will be exposed to many different ideas through the humanities. 

In Slaughter’s article, it is not clearly stated how those two arguments correlate with each other, but the two ideas should be followed in today’s society since they both produce the rich idea of diversity. Each person thinks in a different way, and the thinking process greatly differs from man to woman, from one culture to another. Therefore, in order to breed new and diverse thoughts that will generate a ground-breaking product, there should be engineers that represent very different backgrounds.  

The addition of more liberal arts within the engineering curriculum should also be encouraged, because creativity is more likely to flourish when a person is exposed to disparate fields other than his major.  Creativity will breed an open mind, which is a crucial trait for the future engineer, as it fosters understanding of new concepts and facilitates better problem-solving skills. When creativity is stressed, the individual is challenged to think to the maximum. One can memorize data to his heart’s desire, but without ingenuity, he cannot create anything new. As the prospective engineer learns not only math and science but also literature and history, he will gain different perspectives of the world and thus will gain more creative thought, which will clearly assist in the process of designing better and original products.