reengenharia do ensino

"Reengenharia" do ensino de Engenharia: uma necessidade

It is estimated that more than eighty per cent of the scientific and technological knowledge we use today was produced after the Word War II. It is antecipated that if this dynamics is not disturbed, in the next decade approximately fifty per cent of the products we will be using would not have been invented yet. This astonishing dynamics has profound impact over all social institutions: family, church, Armed Forces, companies, schools, etc. Attention is called to the continuous changes of knowledge and skills required by the labour force. In this scenario, the engineers play an important role since they are involved in almost all development of new technologies and in the final production of goods and services. Engineers are permanently challenged by the progress they themselves promote, risking to become obsolete right after leaving the university if not conveniently trained to face this changing environment. Thus, it should be proposed that the universities should ‘reengineer’ their engineering courses in order to prepare professionals that are intellectually equipped to deal with this reality .Several suggestions were made regarding content of curricula and methodology to be considered. Engineering, education, technology impact.

Os grandes desafios enfrentados pelos países estão hoje intimamente relacionados com as contínuas e profundas transformações sociais ocasionadas pela velocidade com que tem sido gerados novos conhecimentos científicos e tecnológicos, sua rápida difusão e uso pelo setor produtivo e pela sociedade em geral. Atualmente, as complexas demandas das sociedades modernas são atendidas por tecnologias crescentemente resultantes da aplicação de conhecimentos científicos. A partir da busca e a apropriação sistemática, e bem sucedida, de conhecimentos científicos para a produção de tecnologias, que passou a acorrer em larga escala no século dezenove, o conhecimento científico deixou