Assessment of Directions and Opportunities in Current and Future Materials Education

Extract

There is considerable excitement and some turmoil in undergraduate and graduate education in the broad field of materials, as well as in its subfields of metallurgy, ceramics, and polymers. While the reasons are many, the underlying driver is the growth in the visibility and diversity of a young field evolving rapidly into a true discipline, much like chemical engineering and biology from their early roots mainly in chemistry.

The University Materials Council (UMC), the group representing accredited materials departments has had a longstanding, obvious interest in education and has been actively involved in assessing current and future directions. More recently, a comprehensive study under the auspices of the National Research Council (the Materials Science and Engineering Study), has been undertaken to develop a unified view of recent progress and new directions in materials science and engineering (MSE), and to assess future opportunities and needs. As part of this ambitious endeavor, a panel on education (Panel 5) was established with the following charges:

• To investigate and document existing human resources in MSE;

• To identify future directions of education in MSE, including education in and out of materials departments;

• To identify needs and opportunities for increasing interdisciplinarity in MSE; and

• To identify needs and opportunities in lifelong education.