An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

70A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCIL(IEDP): Guideline Syllabuses’. This had been endorsed by the BER and proposed a new typeof honours degree in inter-disciplinary engineering, designed to complement existingnarrowly-based courses. This degree was to be aimed at students who had not yet chosen aspecific engineering discipline, or who could later seek a career in the public service orcommerce, rather than in industry or pure engineering. Students of 18 or older with a goodrange of ‘A’ levels, including mathematics, but not necessarily the usual sciences, were to bewelcomed.This publication elicited nearly 150 formal responses, mostly supportive. An IndustrialForum was convened to discuss the topic and the outcomes were analysed by a consultant.The Industrial Affiliates suggested that the IEDP should be developed to enable a pilot to berun and a number of universities and polytechnics expressed interest in a pilot scheme. A preconditionfor the IEDP courses being accepted onto the pilot scheme was the integration oftheory, practical experiments and project work, all related to applying engineering sciences toreal engineering problems. With financial support from the Government, six universities andpolytechnics in England and Wales were selected initially; during 1989 the scheme wasexpanded into Scotland and Northern Ireland with additional support from industry. The firsttwo programmes began in 1989 at Nottingham (Trent) Polytechnic and StrathclydeUniversity with the aid of DTI funding. The progress of the first cohort of full-time and parttimestudents was encouraging and the Nottingham course was accepted for accreditation bythree Institutions.A progress report on the IEDP was published in January 1990. The first students at Durhamgraduated this year while courses were in their second year at Nottingham Polytechnic andStrathclyde University. Courses commenced at Portsmouth and Sheffield City Polytechnicsand at the University of Wales (Cardiff) and in the following year two more started inQueen’s University, Belfast and Southampton. The IEDP courses were well received by mostInstitutions and some had jointly accredited these courses.The ‘Engineering Applications’ requirements of SARTORSARTOR stipulated that accredited courses should incorporate provisions to satisfy theEngineering Application requirement – a concept that had originated in the 1980 FinnistonReport. Finniston’s Engineering Applications EA1 and EA2 had aimed to ensure thatengineering was taught as a vocational subject, from the basis of real applications in abusiness world, rather than being an exercise in engineering science. These ideas formed theEA1/2 Demonstrator Project, which continued to be supervised by the EngC during 1988.The project was sponsored by the Training Agency as a part of its ‘Enterprise in HigherEducation’ scheme. The work, completed in early 1989, involved nine higher educationalinstitutions that were chosen to cover a range of disciplines in both the university and publicsector. Institutions with more traditional approaches, as well as those with strongly integratedsandwich courses, were included. The outcome was disseminated in June 1989 at aconference held at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s premises. All of the nine highereducational institutions participated, cooperating with industry while team-work, interpersonalskills, and business confidence were fostered. Other partnership schemes, involvingBTEC and HND, such as the one operated at Nene College, Northampton (later to becomeUniversity College Northampton) with a consortium of engineering employers, were alsoencouraged during 1989.© Engineering Council UK 2004