Navigating Ambiguity

Imagine that you graduate as an engineer a few years from now, and have taken your first job as a civil engineer for a great company in Ann Arbor.  You are part of a team doing structural design for the world’s tallest building, to be built in Shanghai. Your boss comes into your office and says. “Evan, I want you to use equation number 16 from Chapter 6 your CEE 312 textbook to calculate the size and spacing of the main columns in the building core.”

Seem unlikely?  It is.  If it was really as simple as pulling formulas out of a book, nobody would be that interested in paying you to do it.

Frequently you have to create your own approach to problem solving, on the fly.  Of course, many problems can be solved by application of known solutions.  But even in such cases it’s seldom that the solution approach is obvious.  You have to look at an ambiguous situation (design the columns to hold up the building); consider alternate designs to address it and recognize some key criteria for assessing those designs (will the columns buckle? will they bend too much from the wind load?); reach for tools that can quantify those criteria (Euler’s formula? finite element analysis?); assess their appropriateness and uncertainty (is an expression for critical buckling load reliable in my situation? did the finite element analysis converge?); and then reach a conclusion about how that analysis informs the problem at hand.  Even when the solution can be found using known ideas, nobody knows what chapter, or chapters, the solution is hiding in, because real problems come without a chapter number.

Solving real problems requires judgment.  It requires making decisions.  And it requires living with the uncertainty that perhaps you don’t have the best answer.

A good university curriculum will challenge you to develop such judgment and make such decisions.  In your classes you should look for and embrace problems that do not have a clear answer, but in which multiple approaches are possible and the result has to be justified and defended.  As a rule, new university students do not enjoy this ambiguity.  We give you ambiguous problems that we did not teach you how to solve, and still your grade depends on the result!  But one role of the university curriculum is to teach you, through experience, how to critically assess problems and build solutions that were previously unknown.

Committing to a decision is hard, and not all judgments are good.  Even so, you should embrace the opportunity when we give you problems that you do now know how to solve, because learning to solve the (apparently) unsolvable is the essence of creative engineering.

Navigating the University of Michigan

Today, first year engineering students begin orientation at the University of Michigan, in one of those rites-of-passage for young adults transitioning from high school to college.   The format is fairly common across American universities: students flocking with excitement to campus, sleeping a few nights in a residence hall, meeting finally with advisors, selecting a set of  fall term courses, and generally learning how to navigate their new environment.  For students at Michigan the details of this navigation are, of course, unique: what’s the Arb? what’s Michigan time? what’s a “Big Blue”? where is CC Little, or, for that matter, who was C. C. Little?   These details of college life are important, of course, but they are eventually conquered as students become used to their new home.

Yet there is another channel to navigate that requires more investment, but which is more important to students’ receiving long-term value from their time at the UM.   Students must also learn to navigate the intellectual culture.

The University of Michigan is one of a small number of selective research universities.  As well described by Jonathan Cole in The Great American University, these schools have a unique character based on core values of free inquiry, the tolerance of challenge to ideas, open communication, and the preparation of the next generation of thinkers. These values are reflected in an educational environment and curriculum in which achievement is less about learning specific facts and rather more about learning the techniques of knowledge application and creation.  It is this curriculum that undergraduates must learn to navigate during their 4 years of study.

Engineering students sometimes think they are here to learn the formulas, to learn information.  But in fact our curriculum aspires to help students learn to analyze systems, synthesize knowledge, to make judgments, and to reach decisions based on this analysis, synthesis and judgment.

Just as new students must be oriented to the buses and extracurricular opportunities at the UM, it is also essential that they be oriented to the core academic values that will undergird their educational experience.

Make A Difference

Last week I asked what you imagine your obligation is to society.  I was pleased that no one challenged the premise of the question, which is that an engineer has an obligation to society.  Long gone are the days when an engineer’s professional obligation was simply to provide technical expertise to a company in exchange for a paycheck.   

The collaborative creation of new things that give us better ways to accomplish fundamental tasks – from providing basic nutrition, to providing aesthetic stimuli, to stretching our minds into new realms – has long been the defining human characteristic.  As much of this work has become professionalized as “engineering,” and made more powerful through this systemization and through a synergy with science and mathematical reasoning, it has become clear that the collective impact of engineering is as important in defining culture as is art.

Standard engineering ethics lays out the case that the negative impact of careless technological practice compels engineers to consider their obligation to safety. This is an important social contract, but it is not the only one. 

Engineering drives our economic engine and provides for human needs.  Engineering creates artifacts – products, technologies, networks – that shape the very way we live.  It is this power of our profession for impact that generates the tremendous social obligation compelling us to think carefully how our work will change the world.  Even though we cannot see all ends, we cannot fail to look and consider what the ends might be.  The primary driver for all our work must be an expectation of a positive impact on human well-being.  This pact to make a positive difference is our fundamental obligation.


This saturday is commencement at the University of Michigan.  I hope our students are thinking, "I will make a difference."

The Social Engineer

Last weekend in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan we undertook a simple ceremony called the Order of The Engineer.  Over seventy students approaching graduation elected to participate in the event and join the order.  The students recited an oath, and then lined up to proceed, one-by-one, to have a stainless steel ring placed on the small finger of their working hand.  It’s the only meeting of the Order of The Engineer in which they will ever participate.  Huh… what’s up with that?

The ceremony has a very simple purpose: it’s a moment to pause, right before their last set of final exams, and think about what they have committed to in undertaking to be engineers.

As part of the ceremony we recall an episode in engineering history when American and Canadian engineers building a bridge in Quebec screwed up.  During construction, on August 29, 1907, the bridge collapsed, killing over 70 workers.  The collapse was the fault of poor design, poor analysis, and poor construction management: errors squarely on the shoulders of the engineers.   Because of this collapse Canadian engineers commonly wear iron or steel rings, said originally to have been made from the wreckage of the bridge.   This ring is a reminder to the engineer of her obligation to those who rely on her skill for their livelihood and safety, and by its wear against paper as the ring moves over pages of plans and calculations the experience of the engineering is symbolically judged.

In the United States this same tradition has taken hold over the last 40 years through the Order of the Engineer ceremony for graduating engineers, reminding American engineering students to reflect on their obligation to society.   

What do you imagine is your obligation to society?

Is this the new student activism?

I often hear a wistful regret expressed that students have lost their passion; that the student activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s has been lost and will not come again.  I don't agree.

In 1968 UM President Robben Fleming and future Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers were communicating with each other through bull horns on the lawn outside the president’s house on South University avenue in Ann Arbor.  While Fleming was against the war in Vietnam and generally tolerant of student protests, Ayers still saw him as “the establishment.”  Fleming writes in his autobiography of addressing crowds of protesters so large they shut down streets, of draft cards and flags burning in his yard, and confederate flags appearing in his windows.  When the Chicago Seven were convicted, a protest march of some 2000 appeared in Ann Arbor.

On the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral, a group of students occupied the University of Michigan’s administration building, baring the doors against entry.  BAM, the Black Action Movement formed in Ann Arbor, and in 1970 organized a general student strike.  Students stopped going to class, professors canceled classes, and the university effectively shut down for a week.  BAM demanded increased black student enrollment at the university, and through negotiations with Fleming, they got it.   These students were passionate.  They saw that the world could be better, and insisted that it be made so.

Where is this passion today?  I think it is still here, but our students have become much more sophisticated in pushing their agendas, and their agendas are theirs, not ours.

Consider for example, today's MPowered student group.  The students in MPowered are passionate about entrepreneurship.  While many of us old “establishment” professors see entrepreneurship as the process of starting a business, the students in MPowered see it as an empowerment mindset.  Their mission, at root, seems to be to make each student realize that that her ideas have value and power, and to provide each student with intellectual tools for making her ideas impact the world.   They routinely get 3000 “pitches” in their annual pitch contest.  Their latest campaign is a petition drive, 1000 Voices, petitioning our College of Literature, Science and the Arts to provide more classes in entrepreneurship.   As I write this they have over 1200 signatures on their petition.

Another example is BLUElab.  These students seek to create appropriate technologies for the developing world, and to actually deploy them in those countries where they will make a difference.  They put huge energy into this, both in Ann Arbor and at sites in developing counties.  Their latest effort is a wind turbine with woven blades that can be made by local women in Guatemala, producing the product for local markets, and providing double economic impact.

These are just two examples; there are others.  The students in BLUElab and in MPowered are passionate about what they do.  They see that the world could be better, and insist that it become so.

Are these the new student activists?

Why do we do what we do?

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, enacted by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, expanded the United States through the creation of the Northwest Territory, a region including the modern State of Michigan.   The ordinance includes the provision that "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."   This is the tradition from which the University of Michigan springs.  The University predates the Morrill Act, but the purpose of that act,  “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life,” further codifies the goals of the university, as was subsequently articulated by UM President James Angell in the oft quoted maxim that the UM provides “an uncommon education for the common man.”

For me these capture the “why” for the College of Engineering. 

We admit students to our school because we believe it is good for them, good for the College, and good for society that they become part of the Michigan Engineering Community.  The work we do with these students will allow them to have a positive impact on the world.  No one of us can solve the problems that face humanity at each moment of history, but we aspire to position our graduates to be significant contributors to such solutions.  Through our work with undergraduate and graduate students comes our primary potential for positive impact on the public that we serve.

We also engage in scholarship – engineering research – with the goal of creating the new scientific knowledge and technological possibilities that will be exploited in addressing major challenges such as making solar energy economical, advancing personalized learning, managing the carbon cycle, and more.  We conduct this research because the knowledge created can itself be of value to society, but also because this research work provides our students, both graduate and undergraduates, with invaluable learning experiences that better prepare them to make their own contributions.

In order for our scholarly and educational work to have the best effect, we believe that we must pursue it within context – we cannot divorce our work from the potential problems that it might solve or the people who it might serve.  Equally, because the problems that our community must tackle are complex, it is critical that our community members work with others across differences of purpose, approach, and culture, while bringing a deep and sound technical foundation to this collaborative effort.

What is a public university?

We all know the University of Michigan (UM) is a public or "state" university.  It’s interesting therefore to note that from its founding in 1817 the UM received no funding from the State of Michigan until 1867.  We operated for 50 years as a public university using student fees and revenues from the sale of a federal land grant.   Yet from the 1851 state constitution on, the UM has been governed by a Board of Regents directly elected by the people of the state.  So we are clearly an institution with a mission and responsibility directed towards the people of Michigan, but the state was 30 years old before the UM received state public funding.

Now public universities in the State of Michigan are facing yet another in a long string of reductions in state financial support.  If the new governor’s budget plans go forward, when all the dust settles the University of Michigan will face a 15% reduction in state support, a loss of about $47 million.  The level of state support at the UM is already a small fraction of the total – the state provides only about 20% of the general fund of the university, and by the time this filters down to the College of Engineering we receive only about 10% of our budget from state funds.   So, many ask, are we really a public university?

I think the question misunderstands what it means to be a public, or state, university.  Don’t misunderstand me: I think the State of Michigan should, indeed must, support the UM and the other public universities of the state.  Like all universities we provide a vital public good, and as befits our public mission we give preferences to residents of the state --- preferences in admissions, in financial aid, and in tuition.  But we should not define our public mission in terms of revenue sources.

A public university makes a commitment to access.  This is why state schools are large; no private school has our scale and scope.  Scale is a direct consequence of our commitment to access; throughout its history the UM has grown so as to provide that “uncommon education for the common man” to an ever-widening population.  And we have grown in the scope of disciplines we offer too – spanning the liberal arts and fine arts, professional programs in engineering, nursing, business, law, and more.   A private school would have gone a different route, because their mission does not demand scope or scale.

A public university must also provide educational opportunity that is, as far as possible, independent of previous advantages for disadvantages.   In the US today there are significant differences in higher education opportunity for students from different communities.  These differences are due to differential K12 school resources, both financial and human, and are due also to cultural causes, especially around the ability of communities and parents to prepare their children for college through a knowledge of college preparation expectations, college education benefits, and financial aid systems.

All public universities must accept the responsibility to make a positive impact on the world.  We do this first through the students that we graduate, well prepared to be contributors to society in all the many dimensions through which every person should contribute – as citizens, as caregivers, as economic actors.  But as a public research university the UM takes on an additional responsibility to the public: to make positive impact through the knowledge that we create.  The UM is a pre-Morrill act land grant school, and indeed helped to create the mold of the public research university, but the purposes of the Morrill act for the promotion of a “liberal and practical education” describe our own goals well, and extend to our scholarship.  We must aspire to practical impact -- economic impact, policy impact, aesthetic impact -- that is for the good of the state and the wider society.

With all these responsibilities we accept that the work we do must be for the public good. These aspirations are not about funding sources, or a trade of support for services.  These aspirations are about accepting a principled mission.   We will continue to provide an uncommon educational opportunity for the citizenry of Michigan. We commit that the intellectual results we generate and the alumni we graduate will have positive impact on the public, if not today then in some tomorrow that we do not yet conceive. And as a public university we make these commitments not because the state funds us, but because it is an important mission for humanity.