CASEE History and NAE Context

History and NAE Context

Background and intellectual context is provided in the commentary provided by NAE president Dr. Wm. A. Wulf and NAE Council president George M.C. Fisher in the Spring 2002 issue of Issues in Science and Technology entitled, "A Makeover for Engineering Education."

Given this context, our plan of action guided by the excerpt below from the “CASEE Strategic Plan”

Under the leadership of former president Dr. Wm. A Wulf, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) instituted a four-fold initiative focused on engineering education:

  • In 1999, the Committee on Engineering Education, was established as a standing program of the Office of the President of NAE. The Committee studies the issues surrounding engineering education through a series of projects that explore different, timely questions relating to engineering education.
  • In 2000, the NAE's governing Council re-interpreted its criteria for membership to more fully recognize contributions to engineering education.
  • In 2001, the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education was established as a biennial award of $500,000 to emphasize the importance of education to the future of engineering. (In 2003, Dr. Gordon donated additional funds so that the award is now given annually.)


In 2002, as the fourth part of the strategy, the NAE launched the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education (CASEE). Continuous improvement cannot be achieved without fundamental rethinking of the “what and how” engineering should be taught. CASEE will help to accomplish this reassessment of what and how we teach, and to take advantage of the advances in knowledge about how students learn.

Guiding Vision for CASEE
CASEE’s vision is of an engineering education system (K-gray), that through continuous improvement and dedication to excellence, contributes to the sustained maintenance of a high quality engineering workforce.

Mission for CASEE
During January 28-29, 2002, the NAE's Committee on Engineering Education hosted a retreat convening 28 leaders from the academic, industrial, and government sectors to discuss the most compelling reasons for establishing CASEE, and to provide guidance on how to structure and carry out the activities of CASEE.

Based on input received at the NAE Education Retreat, the guiding mission for CASEE in pursuit of its vision is to enable engineering education to meet, in a significantly better way, the needs of employers, educators, students, and society-at-large.

Through its activities, CASEE will seek to identify, disseminate, and implement the means to close the gaps between the inherent and acquired attributes (knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes) of engineering graduates and those attributes desired by academe, industry, government and the graduates themselves.

Goal and Grand Challenge for CASEE
CASEE will achieve its mission through pursuit of Excellence in Engineering Education, defined along three dimensions: effectiveness, engagement, and efficiency. It has defined specific, measurable outcomes as a grand challenge for itself and the engineering community as evidence of attaining its goal.

Research and Development Thrusts
The research and development program CASEE seeks to promote and pursue in its effort to achieve its grand challenges has four research thrusts that focus on identifying bodies of knowledge, enhancing diversity, improving teaching and learning, and developing assessments.

Core Strategies
Three key strategies will underlie all activities of CASEE in pursuit of its strategic goals:

  • Build the capacity for the conduct of high quality research on engineering education,
  • Integrate engineering education research and practice, and
  • Leverage the efforts and interests of relevant stakeholders.

Building the capacity for the conduct of high quality research on engineering education will require attention to intellectual capacity and human capacity. Intellectual capacity includes fostering the use of rigorous research methods, supporting the preparation of research tools/instrumentation/resource materials, and subjecting research findings to the most critical review with respect to quality and utility. Attention to human capacity includes building the competence and skills of existing engineering education researchers and preparing the next generation of engineering education researchers with opportunities to learn and practice the most effective theories, tools, and methods.

Integrating engineering education research and practice refers both to actively seeking opportunities to transition the most promising engineering education research findings into classroom and laboratory practice and to allowing the challenges of teaching and learning in authentic settings (i.e., undergraduate and graduate schools as well as industrial and business environments) to shape the priorities for engineering education research and the interpretation of the results from research programs. A critical aspect of transitioning research findings into actual use will be progressing from theory to pilots to large-scale implementation.

Leveraging the efforts and interests of relevant stakeholders will require cognizance and appropriate coordination with other activities within the NAE (e.g,. Committee on Engineering Education and the Committee on Diversity), the National Research Council (e.g,. the Center on Education), campus-based centers on engineering education, and the education activities of engineering and science professional societies. For example, the needs assessment on the skills required by engineering students should be a result of the on-going “The Engineer of 2020” study by the NAE’s Committee on Engineering Education. Furthermore, documentation of current practices in engineering education should result from the study of engineering education being conducted as part of efforts such as the “Preparation for the Professions” program of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Operational Objectives
Given the foregoing, CASEE's near-term operational objectives are to

  • Build the body of knowledge on attaining and maintaining excellence in engineering education,
  • Cultivate a respected community of scholars of who will replenish that body of knowledge, and
  • Promote the dissemination, adoption, and use of this knowledge.


These objectives extend and adapt strategic objectives for education research presented in Improving Student Learning (DBASSE, 1999, page 54).