CAMPUS CURRENT
In the Hunt for Engineering Innovation 2011 MUDD DESIGN WORKSHOP VIII IS LARGEST YET
Teaching and showbiz are alike in the sense that it’s important to always finish big and leave the audience wanting more. That’s exactly what retiring Professor Clive L. Dym did at Mudd Design Workshop (MDW) VIII, held in May. Dym stood on stage for a final time in his role as organizing committee chairman of this important biennial event. He has been its driving force since 1997, when MDW debuted. As in the past, MDW brought together engineering design educators, practitioners and students to bandy ideas about in- novation and entrepreneurship. However, this year’s gathering attracted 85 registrants, an approximately 67 percent gain over prior attendance norms.
Also headlining the event was Larry J. Leifer, a Stanford
University professor of mechanical engineering design and the founding director of that school’s Center for Design Research. Leifer lamented that engineers are not taught the ancient art of hunting—at least hunting in the intellectual sense. Were they, he later wrote, it would be a matter of course for them to track, spot, trap and haul home the “next big idea,” a most elusive quarry. At one point during the proceedings, Dym—the Fletcher
Jones Professor of Engineering Design and the director of the HMC Center for Design Education—reminded attendees that HMC’s engineering program was developed by “visionaries, in- novators and entrepreneurs who put together a curriculum that was well ahead of its time…[They] were ‘doers’ rather than talk- ers or writers and publishers of papers….” In other words, they, like Dym, knew how to always finish big and leave an audience wanting more.
—Rich Smith
Faculty News
Origins of the Mudd Design Workshop Clive Dym
The three-day event yielded a number of intriguing insights about idea formation. For example, a consensus developed around the notion that innovative concepts frequently arise unexpectedly, but especially during times when informal thought-processes occur. These are generally labeled “out-of-ac- tion reflections,” and a good illustration is the burst of creative thinking stimulated by taking a hot shower in the morning. Keynoter Alice Merner Agogino from the University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley asserted that the journey to success in design engineering entails traveling the path less taken. “Good design requires utilizing methods and expertise out-
side of one’s discipline in engineering; thus, finding a way to create partnerships outside the college of engineering in the social sciences, education, arts and humanities is vital,” Agogino elaborated in a post-event writing.
In 1997, HMC’s Department of Engineering instituted a biennial program of Mudd Design Workshops to bring together design educators, practitioners and researchers to discuss issues in design and engineering education. The MDWs have become a highly-desirable meeting place with important intellectual content on design pedagogy for engineering faculty.
• Computing Futures of Engineering Design, 1997 • Designing Design Education for the 21st Century, 1999 • Social Dimensions of Engineering Design, 2001 • Designing Engineering Education, 2003 • Learning and Engineering Design, 2005 • Design and Engineering Education in a Flat World, 2007 • Sustaining Sustainable Design, 2009 • Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2011
Workshop Proceedings:
hmc.edu/academicsclinicresearch/inter- disciplinarycenters/cde1/workshops1/
pastworkshops.html
10 Har vey Mudd College FALL/WINTER 2011
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