@Engineer80
" So studying a STEM major in a technological university (“STEM school” - I prefer the university nomenclature, since that is what it really is) is an impediment to “discovery and growth”? "
My terminology may be perceived as an impediment to discovery and growth. However, this is a common perception held by many, largely outside of the STEM university community. Over the years, many marketing studies have indicated this perception and consumer concern is very real. As a STEM graduate who edited the STEM institute newspaper, worked as a German translator loving the German Culture and as a big fan of the history, I also feel this commonly held perspective does not reflect the caliber and depth of STEM students anywhere.
Historically, these universities have been stereotyped by the more classically evolved educational world. Education was largely a more genteel pastime consisting largely of theologians and the well heeled. Then along came this soot covered technician with his steam engines (Stevens), steel (CMU), liquid rockets (WPI) and Ferris Wheels (RPI).
Due to the industrial evolution, Engineers were needed, BUT:
"… science and “technology” had been separate, primarily because of divisions enforced by the colleges, which disdained engineering altogether. By mid-century they had begun to interact. The primary impetus for this change was the growth of larger and more sophisticated manufacturing companies (Noble, 1977).
Despite these great inroads, engineering retained its “outsider” status in academe. While science (as the experimentally directed outgrowth of “natural philosophy”) was gaining slow acceptance as a bona fide element of classical studies, engineering remained more distinctly separate. (It is significant that engineers and other “special school” students were excluded from membership in Phi Beta Kappa by the late 19th century; engineers formed their own honorary society, Tau Beta Pi, in 1885.) Engineering professors experienced this disdain most directly, and it was partly through their desire for greater academic respectability that, after 1870, engineering curricula became progressively more scientific in content (Noble, 1977). See https://www.nap.edu/read/586/chapter/4#21
Early and well funded attempts to launch fully developed engineering programs at Harvard and Yale largely failed because of resistance from faculties focused on Classics. It was so bad that my classically trained father refused to let me fix the lawn mower. It always was fixed after he went into the house. My teenage sister wanted to know why I was studying how to drive trains. While I was cleaning the windshield of her car, a French professor from Wellesley took note of my enterprising attitude and wanted to know if I hoped to have my own gas station after graduation from WPI.
Our culture seems slow to recognize its own perspectives while it has largely criticized the engineer for an education they often perceive as uninteresting and narrow. Many of these same people run from Calculus as though it is a disease of the untouchables, but are critical if lacking background in Irish Literature. My take is we should do both, BUT.
Four years does not give enough time for most smart people to obtain a broad education as measured by a list of courses. The tool kit requires some facts, some techniques and an attitude which never stops learning. Technology pushes all of society rapidly in many unexpected directions. As a right handed hockey player I know you can shoot with your left hand if you try hard enough!