3. What are the target outcomes of mechanical engineering education?

Advocacy for educational Planning for the Future as an exercise in mining the best corporately-held mechanical engineering intelligence through a four-step process has been presented in previous chapters. This process can be enriched through the use of scenarios and thematic gap analyses. As a part of planning for the future of mechanical engineering, this chapter provides guidance in improvement work so that knowing what to think as best educational knowledge is connected in a congruent way to knowing what to do as best educational practice. The relationship between both knowledge and practice in mechanical engineering education is posited as a mental model for planning for the future. Further, in this chapter relevant target outcomes designed to measure student development related to the three areas of competency development, systems, sustainability, and ethics, are presented as rubrics. These target outcomes are derived from the stakeholder needs of employers, students, faculty and society, for early engineering success as described in Chapter Two.