Four years is not nearly time enough to train an engineer, and schools are long on theory and short on practice
R. Russell Rhinehart, School of Chemical Engineering, Oklahoma State University
From ControlGlobal.com
I’d like to address the gap between the academic and practice control community—why it exists, the issues it creates, things that can be done to bridge the gap and the need for industry mobilization to cause change. My focus is on the U.S. situation. There are two issues. One is the general lack of practice experience in the faculty, which aligns student perspectives to the science/research “way,” and the other is the absence of a control engineering curriculum.
In this column, I will describe the problem. In a later column, I will discuss solutions.