Citation (IEEE): B. M. Gordon, “What Is an Engineer?” Invited keynote, European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) Annual Conference, Univ. of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, 1984. Reprinted by the Gordon Institute, 1988–1999.
What it argues
An industrialist’s answer to what engineering schools should produce. Rather than defining engineering by a label (science, art, profession), Gordon defines it by what engineers actually do in companies: create working products under real constraints. He traces the knowledge, skills and attitudes an entry-level engineer needs, describes a career as a ladder of increasing design responsibility, places engineering within the whole company, and warns that computational technique should not be confused with engineering content.