Developing Personal Matereyto Educate Future Engineers

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Developing Personal Mastery of Engineering Educators to
Educate Future Engineers
1. Dr.N.Asokan, Engineering Education Consultant, Faculty Trainer & Former
Principal. 19/ 2c Sri Sai Subramanya Apts, Temple Avenue, Sri Nagar Colony,
Saidapet, Chennai 600 015. ntvasokan@gmail.com Mobile:9445191369.
2. Mr. Mohankumar, Associate Professor, Tulisiramji Gaikwwad Patil College of
Engineeering and Technology, Mohgon, Butibori, Nagpur.
mohankumar.sugumar@gmail.com Mobile: 07373944029
Background
As we try to predict the future of the engineering profession and engineering education, we
must take into account some important factors. History has shown that changes in the
engineering profession follow changes in cultural, social, and political environments.
Evidence shows that these changes in the profession have led to technology breakthroughs
that helped or harmed social progress, depending on the political environment surrounding
them.
Engineering profession in the next decade will undergo dramatic changes, driven by not only
technological developments but also societal transformation. This tectonic shift will pose
challenges to all the stake holders, educational institutions, government, teachers and
students. Each one of them needs to gear up itself to address the challenges. It also calls for
change in mindsets so that the transition is smooth and successful.
Despite these changes, however, many of the challenges facing engineering educators have
remained remarkably consistent over time. The questions of what to include in curricula, how
long engineering education should last, how much specialization there should be at the
undergraduate level, how to prepare students for careers that include both technical and
managerial tracks, and how to meet the needs and expectations of society all seem timeless.
Past accomplishments of teachers guarantee nothing about future success and an almost
obsessive need for self-initiated teaching, learning and assessing process and continuous
improvement. There is a need for granular understanding of what is happening outside, with
stakeholders and in teaching, learning and assessing operations.
Developing personal mastery, it will be argued, is central to the quality of higher education
and educating future engineers. The paper looks at developing the personal mastery among
the educators in higher education to educate future engineers.

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Transformations of Engineering Education
Educator is the fulcrum, on whom quality of future education lies, particularly in highly
knowledge centric area like engineering education. The engineering profession has a trans-
organizational character. There is a need for a dramatic and fundamental transformation of
the educational process
Engineering education has been the subject of more studies and reviews, formal and informal,
than any other domain of professional education. In the pages of the Journal of Engineering
Education, which was launched by the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education in
1893, one can track the ongoing debates about the nature and shape of engineering education.
History suggests that there is more self-awareness in the engineering community than in most
other professional communities about the educational enterprise that prepares new members
to enter the profession. The proper balance between science, engineering science, and design
is only one of the issues engineers and engineering educators have debated at length over the
last 125 years.
The history of past and present accomplishments in technology could teach the general public
why engineers deserved to be leaders in society (Fleming, 1920; McDonald, 1921; Pendred,
1923; Prelini, 1920; Waddell, 1903; Zwilgmeyer, 1925).
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)- sponsored EC 2000 project,
which identified 12 competences engineering students need upon graduation. These
competences include oral and spoken communication, teamwork, understanding of the global
and local contexts of engineering, and knowledge of contemporary issues (Caruana, 1999).
Seel (2000) suggests that cultural change in engineering education will be achieved only
when the nature of the conversation about engineering education has changed. Eckel and
Kezar (2003) suggest that transforming engineering education will require that the majority
of engineering faculty members change the way they think about engineering education.
The reformation in engineering education suggest that social and political changes cannot be
successfully adapted and adopted if current faculty are not actively encouraged and supported
to develop their personal mastery.
OPPORTUNITY AND CHALLENGE
This is the most exciting period in human history for science and engineering. Explosive
advances in knowledge, instrumentation, communication, and computational capabilities
have created mind-boggling possibilities for the next generation. The distinction between

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science and engineering in some domains has been blurred to extinction, which raises some
serious issues for engineering education.
Engineering institutions today are facing a challenge they have never faced before. They must
prepare engineers for solving unknown problems and not for addressing assumed scenarios.
Therefore, the emphasis should be on teaching to learn rather than providing more
knowledge.
Teaching engineers to think analytically will be more important than helping them memorize
algebra theorems. Teaching them to cope with rapid progress will be more critical than
teaching them all of the technology breakthroughs.
As we think about the many challenges ahead, it is important to remember that students are
driven by passion, curiosity, engagement, and dreams. Although we cannot know exactly
what they should be taught, we must think about the environment in which they learn and the
forces, ideas, inspiration, and empowering situations to which they are exposed. In the long
run, making universities and engineering institutions exciting, creative, adventurous,
rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus are more important than specifying curricular
details.
Need for Personal Mastery
Technical excellence is the essential attribute of engineering graduates, but those graduates
should also possess team, communication, ethical reasoning, and societal and global
contextual analysis skills as well as understand work strategies. Engineers able to
communicate with the public, able to engage in a global engineering marketplace, or trained
to be lifelong learners.
At the application end of engineering practice, there is a growing disconnect with engineering
education that begs for enlightened industrial engineering leaders and there is a need for a
new generation of faculty able to bridge the gap more effectively
There is a need for faculty to possess the mix of knowledge, skills and experiences to
determine how best to provide students with the knowledge and experiences essential to
engineering practice.
The half-life of cutting-edge technical knowledge today is on the order of a few years, but
globalization of the economy is accelerating and the international marketplace for
engineering services is dynamic. In such an environment, an engineering faculty cannot
recognize global trends and lacks the ability, instinct, or desire for continuous learning. As
well as delivering content, engineering institutions must teach engineering students how to

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learn, and must play a continuing role along with professional organizations in facilitating
lifelong learning,
A recent paper by Professor M.K. Khanijo (2004), senior consultant with the Engineering
Council of India, describes India’s motivation for signing on to the Washington Accord:
“Since GATS [General Agreement of Trade in Services] emphasizes recognition of
qualifications of professionals, it is in India’s interest to get its own system of recognition and
registration made acceptable at the international level. If this is not done, Indian engineers
will be at a disadvantage and may even be ruled out when they seek opportunities for
employment.”
The engineering profession will be more likely to capture the imaginations of young people,
thus moving engineering to the forefront as educating engineers rethink about their personal
mastery. Educating engineers will be among the most creative, energetic, and dynamic
professionals in the world to educate the young engineers of next generations.
Personal Mastery
Personal mastery (Peter, 2006) is the discipline of personal growth and learning. It goes
beyond competence and skills, though it is grounded in competence and skills. It is
continually expanding people’s ability to create the results in life they truly seek. It embodies
two underlying movements.
The first is continually clarifying what is important to us. The second is continually learning
how to see current reality more clearly. In moving toward a desired destination, it is vital to
know where we are now. Personal mastery is not something we posses. It is a process. It is a
lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their
ignorance, their incompetence, and their growth areas.
Higher education on a global scale experienced extraordinary change during the past 150
years in response to internal intellectual trends as well as external societal forces (Robinson,
2002). We’re not talking about good teaching or even outstanding teaching. We’re talking
about engineering educators with high personal mastery that facilitate such extraordinary
distance travelled by students along the learning journey that phenomenal outcomes are
consistently achieved by all learners. We’re talking about students remembering the impact
of these engineering educators for the rest of their lives
Hassan El Hares (1994) opinioned that both the ideal graduate and the model faculty member
for the 21st
century will possess a number of desirable attributes. Engineering faculty will be
on the front line of any change, and encouraging and enlisting their support for engineering

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education innovations is essential. It’s based on faculties’ capabilities, their reliability, their
learnability, their strengths, and their talents. It requires healthy life style, warm relationships,
intense focus, fanatic discipline, and incisive thinking to effectively garnering attention and
holding interest for gadget –friendly world.
The authors have identified nine characteristics of personal mastery namely Vision for
themselves, Performance with Purpose, High Energy, Storytelling, Fanatic Discipline,
Lifelong Learning, Trusted Relationship, Simplicity and System Thinking.
These characteristics have been deduced by authors by looking at the results of a number of
extensive research studies, out of their own experience and through engaging in deep
dialogue with a variety of engineering educators who have consistently delivered exceptional
outcomes over an extended period.
These characteristics are perhaps less tangible than expected. Many of the characteristics are
at the level of Talent, Knowledge, Skill, Identity and Belief.
Developing Personal Mastery
It’s important to realize that educators don’t become an educator with high personal mastery
in a day and educators also don’t become a educators with high personal mastery through
delivering outstanding ‘snapshot’ lessons upon observation. Being an educator with high
personal mastery is about consistently applying the principles of personal mastery on a daily
basis. The process of developing personal mastery has no end goal. Educators do not become
a Educator with high personal mastery once they achieve a certain level of competence. They
develop these characteristics increasingly and work on these aspects on a lifelong basis. It is
the continuous approach of creative growth, possibility, development of potential. It is
evolution.
Vision for Themselves
Successful people have a very clear idea of what they believe they can become, what they
think they are capable of, a ‘vision for themselves’ that exists long before the reality is
created. Visualize great outcomes for the lessons they taught, expect students to be inspired
for life, set high expectations in all domains of student contribution and don’t be afraid to
dream the impossible dream.
The sausage machine is a very powerful metaphor for life. If you want pork sausages out, you
put pork in. If you want beef sausages out, you put beef in. So, if you want a successful
teaching experience out, that’s exactly what you need to put in. Engineering educators high

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personal mastery realize that they are at the creative end of the sausage machine, choosing the
ingredients and turning the handle, rather than waiting at the other end for the sausages to
come out, hoping that they’ll taste nice!
Performance with Purpose:
It can truly be said that happens until there is vision. But it is equally true that a vision with
no underlying sense of purpose , no calling, is just a good idea – all “sound and fury,
signifying nothing”. Once educators have clearly conceived their core philosophy, it should
constantly be referred to in lessons so students begin to ponder their well-thought out ideas.
Having a reason for doing something is so important for the questioning mind. We have
evolved way beyond the ‘because I say so’ mentality. That doesn’t work very well for
engineering educators and it works even more poorly for students. At the level of focus,
educators just need to be constantly relating anything that they are actually doing to a bigger
purpose.
Learning Mathematics are poorly understood by students mainly because they are poorly
communicated by us as engineering educators. One metaphor that comes in handy is the
‘Weight Training For Your Brain’ approach. Educators explain that you don’t go to the gym
and lift weights so that you become good at weights, good at lifting things off your chest in
case you get run over by a trolley at airport or shopping mall. Not at all. You do weight
training so that you build up your muscles for health, to increase your energy, to get in good
shape. You end up with a stronger, faster and more powerful body.
Mathematics is weight training for the brain.
Exercising the brain makes it stronger, faster, and more powerful. There may be a few
students who don’t believe that Maths does this, but there won’t be any that will argue with
you over the benefits of having a stronger, faster and more powerful brain.
The learning must have an authentic purpose in order to get the most out of students. It must
be easy for students to see the value of their learning in a real-world context. The ‘How Can I
USE this?’ question must have an obvious answer.
High Energy:
The single most attractive personal attribute is energy. Engineering educators with high
energy give the impression of increase for all their followers. The impression of increase is
just that: students perceive educators as being able to bring more to their lives.

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More ideas, more knowledge, more fun, more money, more qualifications, better feelings,
more security, more confidence, more poise, more power, more control, more wisdom.
Engineering educators with high personal mastery give the impression of increase routinely,
without even being aware of it. Their students want to be around them - they won’t leave
them alone, they follow them around at lunch, they stay after school, they bother them at
every break time.
Story Telling:
The world’s religions are built on powerful stories. Our culture is defined by the stories we
tell—in movies, in books, in the media. Human beings just have a natural affinity for stories.
Stories are the currency of our thoughts.
The stories don’t have to be dramatic, they don’t have to be captivating, and they don’t have
to be entertaining. And that’s comforting to a lot of us who don’t consider ourselves great
storytellers or dramatists
In order to be followed, educators have to be respected. In order to be respected, they need to
tell their stories. Students have got to know what educators have done, what educators believe
in, what educators stand for. Students have got to want what educators have got.
There are three reasons why this is crucial:
1. Students will respect educators more if they know something about educators.
2. Students will be interested in the learning topic if educators personalize it.
3. Major payoff that stories provide: inspiration. Inspiration drives action, as does simulation.
Stories cause mental simulation. Mental simulation can also build skills. A review of 35
studies featuring over 3,214 participants showed that mental practice alone—sitting quietly,
without moving, and picturing yourself performing a task successfully from start to finish—
improves performance significantly.
Stories are effective teaching tools. Story is part entertainment and part instruction. Story
reflects core message. Telling a story makes it relevant to educators and therefore relevant to
students by association. Because the story never ends, it develops. And that’s what keeps
people interested. Get a story.
Simplicity.
The educational system is very complex system consists of many variances, unknowns, and
uncertainties. Complexity can easily undermine confidence and responsibility.

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Simplicity has near universal agreement from leading thinkers in the world about its
importance. Simplicity is the force that has powered the Apple brand to success and also
driven politicians to win elections and world-changing social movements.
The process of prioritization is the heart of simplicity. It’s what we ( Heath, 2007 ) call
“finding the core.” Simplicity doesn’t mean dumping down, it means choosing. Some
concepts are more critical than others. And as the teacher, you’re the only one who can make
that determination.
Andrew Carl Singer teaches a class on digital signal processing at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. It’s a complex subject, and it’s easy to get lost in the mathematics. So he
works hard to find the core of his class. He said: what are the 3 things that they need to know
to both get the job and make the University of Illinois proud to have this graduate working in
this field?. By focusing on the core ideas of the course, I could keep the class on track to the
core messages I wanted them to learn. I also focused on this core message when deciding
what material to keep in the course and what should be left out.
Educators can communicate a lot of information in compact fashion: . For instance, take the
classic Bohr model of an atom. Educators explain it by saying, “Electrons orbit the nucleus
the way that planets orbit the sun.” It’s like the solar system but on a microscopic level.
Simplicity makes ideas stick by keeping students lean and focused. The model of a simple
idea is not a sound bite, it’s the Golden Rule—a one-sentence idea that’s sufficiently
profound that you could spend a lifetime living up to it.
Systems Thinking
System thinking (Peter, 2006) is a discipline for seeing the “structures” that underlie complex
situations. As we enter the “age of interdependence”,
 humankind have the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb,
 to foster far greater interdependence than anyone can manage
 to accelerate change faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace.
All are concerned with a shift of mind from
 seeing parts to seeing wholes,
 seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping
their reality
 reacting to the present to creating future.

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People have to develop the ability to see the whole and establish a frame work for seeing
inter-relationships rather than individual things- for seeing patterns of change rather than
static “snapshots”
System thinking forms a rich language for describing a vast array of interrelationships and
patterns of change. Ultimately, it simplifies life by helping us see the deeper patterns lying
behind the events and details.
In 1998, MIT established an Engineering Systems Division, which reflected a growing
awareness of the rising social and intellectual importance of complex engineered systems.
Indisputably, engineers of today and tomorrow must conceive and direct projects of
enormous complexity that require a new, highly integrative view of engineering systems. We
need to establish a proper intellectual framework within which to study, understand, and
develop large, complex engineered systems. As Bill Wulf [president of the National
Academy of Engineering] has eloquently warned us, we work every day with systems whose
complexity is so great that we cannot possibly know all of their possible end states. Under
those circumstances, how can we ensure that they are safe, reliable, and resilient? In other
words, how can we practice engineering?
Fanatic Discipline
Fanatic discipline is (Jim Collins 2011, p23) defines as consistency of action towards one’s
own vision.. Consistency with long term goals. Consistency with performance standards
above what is required. Consistency of method. Consistency over time.
True discipline requires independence of mind to reject pressure to confirm in ways
incompatible with values, performance standards, and long term aspirations. The only form
legitimate form of discipline is self discipline, having the inner will to do whatever it takes to
create a great outcome, no matter how difficult.
Discipline is not the same as measurement. Discipline is not the same as regimentation.
Discipline is not the same as hierarchical obedience. Discipline is not the same as adherence
to bureaucratic rules. Educators with high personal mastery are fanatically driven, infected
with an incurable need to produce great results.
Lifelong Learning

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In addition to producing professionals who have been taught the advances in core knowledge
and are capable of defining and solving problems in the short term, educators must teach
students how to be lifelong learners (Educating engineers, 2005, p2).
Lifelong learning is the "lifelong, lifewide, voluntary, and self-motivated" (Department of
Education and Science (2000) pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional
reasons. The term recognises that learning is not confined to childhood or the classroom, but
takes place throughout life and in a range of situations. Learning can no longer be divided
into a place and time to acquire knowledge (school) and a place and time to apply the
knowledge acquired (the workplace) (Fischer, Gerhard, 2000).
As Argyris (1985) says, there is a need to learn, arises from a “learning gap” between what is
known and what needs to be known. Learning involves a fundamental shift or movement of
mind. Lifelong learning is an activity to fill up the “competency gap” between what you want
and what is your current competency level to achieve what you want. It cannot be learnt
without the willingness to practice. The willingness to act towards what you want, to risk, to
fail.
There are three things important for practicing
1. Self discipline
2. Comfort with repetitiveness
3. If required, comfort with being alone.
Gerald Grow defines self directed learners as those individuals who are able to “Examine
themselves, their culture and their milieu in order to separate what they
 Feel from what they should feel
 Want from what they should want
 Value from what they should value”
Learning (www.solonline.org) is a process of enhancing learner’s capacity, individually and
collectively, to produce results they truly want to produce. This definition has been helpful
because it emphasizes two crucial features of learning that are often misunderstood: 1. the
building of capacity for effective action, as opposed to intellectual understanding only; and 2.
the fact that this capacity builds over considerable time.
Trusted Relationship
The biggest crisis in our world today is one of believability. It makes it tougher to build a
successful business, find and keep a job, or convince anyone to do or believe in anything.

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There is nothing people care about more than being able to build better relationships with the
others around them. There was a phrase for this new skill . . . human relations. It started to be
used to describe the ability to get along with and influence other people.
Dale Carnegie’s success was based on the relationships he was able to cultivate with others,
and his ability to teach people to learn the same skill—what he called human relations.
In order to be more believable and more trusted—you need to be more likeable (Rohit, 2012).
Trusted people are more influential and successful. Trusted ideas are more likely to inspire
belief. The most important global currency isn’t made of paper anymore— it’s made of
relationships. People trust and choose to believe people they like. The key to success is your
ability to earn trust.
‘‘The more people trust you, the more they buy from you.’’
–David Ogilvy
Conclusion:
Why are educators teaching this stuff, when students could easily learn this on the internet,
from books, through games etc.?
Well, it’s because educators are an inspiration, students want something educators have got,
students see educators in action, talented, and pick up the fact that they believe in themselves,
they work hard, they think differently, they simplify the complexity, they have great personal
energy, they trust worthy, they are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to
produce great results and they tell great stories...
The educators of next generation should develop mastery to be globally competitive over the
length of his or her career. The message here is that our greatest contribution as engineering
educators are that ‘we must be what we want students to be.’
No People can rise above the level of its teachers- Cicero

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References:
Argyris.C, (1985), Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines Boston: Pitman.
Caruana, C.M. 1999. New accreditation process stirs controversy. Chemical Engineering
Progress 95(7): 11–18.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
Random House.
Department of Education and Science (2000), Learning for Life: White Paper on Adult
Education.Dublin:StationeryOffice.http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_st
orage_01/0000019b/80/1a/c6/5e.pdf]. Retrieved on Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Eckel, P.D. and A. Kezar. 2003. Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher
Education. Westport, Conn.: Praeger
Educating the Engineer of 2020: (2005). Adapting Engineering Education to the New
Century Committee on the Engineer of 2020, Phase II, Committee on Engineering
Education, National Academy of Engineering. Available on
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html,. Retrieved on Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Fischer, Gerhard (2000). "Lifelong Learning - More than Training" in Journal of Interactive
Learning Research, Volume 11 issue 3/4 pp 265-294
Fleming, R. 1920. Needed: a history of engineering. Engineering News-Record 84
(February12): 322–324.
Hassan El Hares.(1994), Higher Education Staff Development for the 21st Century:
University Teaching Networks: The Arab Network for Staff Development. UNESCO
http://djn2mgzx0uvlm.cloudfront.net/Guardian_RootRepository/Saras/ContentPackaging/Up
loadRepository/267439/75009f97641e4bb780bd0d48b30ba881/AFrameworkForExceptional
Teaching.pdf. Retrieved on April 7, 2014
http://www.solonline.org
Jim Collins and Morten T Hansen (2011). Great by Choice. Harper Collins p 23
Khanijo, M.K. 2004. Implications of GATS on the engineering profession. Available online
at http://www.iete.info/ECI/ImplicationsGATS.htm.

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McDonald, P.B. 1921. History of science: a cultural course for engineering students.
Engineering and Contracting 56(November 23): 481–482.
Pendred, L.St.L. 1923. Value of technological history. Power 58(December 18): 1006.
Peter. M. Senge The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.
Random House. Business Books, 2006, London
Prelini, C. 1920. Needed: a history of engineering. Engineering News-Record 84(March 18):
580.
Robinson, M. P, (2002), “Envisioning Change: The past, present and future of research
Universities”, Draft Document, 2002, University of Southern California, USA.
Rohit Bhargava (2012). Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust,
Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action. Wiley.1 edition.
Seel, R. 2000. Culture and complexity: New insights on organizational change.
Organizations and People 7(2): 2–9.
Waddell, J.A.L. 1903. The advisability of instructing engineering students in the history of
the engineering profession. Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering
Education 11: 193–217.
Zwilgmeyer, P.G. 1925. History of engineering: a desideratum and an opportunity for A.A.E.
Professional Engineer 10(November): 7–9.

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