This
Special Education Session will focus on multiple challenges and
opportunities that are
presented
to young investigators preparing for careers in science and
engineering and will
address
important control engineering education issues of balancing math,
science and technology
in
engineering education. Invited international control engineering
scholars and educators
from
academia and industry will share a word of wisdom in addressing the
following and
other
related questions: How do we integrate research and education? What we,
scientists
and
educators, should do about cultivating student interest in science,
math and engineering?
Is
it important for control engineering students to know math and
science? Should control engineering
education
focus mostly on engineering? What kind of control engineering
textbooks are popular among students?
Do
they need textbooks? This event follows a series of similar successful
events and celebrates the
11th
Anniversary of the Control Systems Society and American Automatic
Control Council Outreach Program.
This
special Session will also revisit the project "Plain Talk on
Systems & Control for a Wide Range of the Public" i
nitiated
at the 2006 CDC in New Orleans and discuss the follow up project. One
of the major challenges for
the
controls community is to enhance its own public image and convey the
essence and contribution of the
field
to outsiders; for this, coordinated effort has to take place. The
purpose of this follow up project is
to
prepare “Plain Talk about the Power, Beauty and Excitement of the
Cross Boundaries Nature of the
Systems
& Control for the Non-Control Engineering Audience.” A sample
of short talks given at various
workshops
for high school teachers and students as well as for a target
audience of non-control engineering
professionals
and the general public will be presented and discussed.