Edwin C. Jones, Jr., received all of his degrees in electrical engineering but has also worked in the field of engineering education. While a faculty member at Iowa State University, he was extensively involved in ASEE, the IEEE Education Society, and ABET. Much of his work in the education societies has been administrative.  He is especially passionate about recognizing outstanding researchers in the field of engineering education. He has also worked with ABET in a variety of roles for over 30 years.

 The profile below was authored by Kevin B. Roth, Colorado School of Mines, based on an interview with Dr. Jones in 2014.

Dr. Edwin C. Jones, Jr.

University Professor Emeritus, Iowa State University
Adjunct Professor and 3M Fellow, University of St. Thomas

Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois, 1962
D.I.C., Electrical Engineering, Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, 1956
B.S., Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, 1955

An unexpected pathway to becoming an educator

My experience with engineering started at a young age.  My parents were both faculty members at West Virginia University (WVU). My mother taught in home economics, as it was known then, and my father had a 75-year continuous association with WVU, from student to faculty to department head and finally to emeritus. I grew up in West Virginia and enrolled at WVU to pursue my degree in electrical engineering. My father, Edwin C. Jones, Sr., was the department head during my time as an undergraduate at WVU, so naturally, there was no way I wanted to be an educator! After I graduated in 1955, I received a Rotary Foundation Fellowship to travel to England to pursue my Diploma of Associate Membership of the Imperial College, then a part of the University of London. I got so interested in education after being away from home and seeing other aspects of it, particularly internationally, that I made up my mind that I did want to become an engineering educator.

Even though my interest in engineering education had been piqued by my time in London, I served in the U.S. Army before I began my pursuit of a doctorate. After two years as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1956 to 1958, I began to apply to graduate school. This proved a non-trivial task, as I was stationed in northern Japan at the time; even making telephone calls was challenging. I applied to a number of graduate programs and then had to decide. A primary factor in my decision was a letter that I received from the department head at the University of Illinois. He wrote a two-page letter detailing the reasons why I should attend graduate school at this university and the opportunities I would have. I had mentioned in my application that I was interested in a career in academia, and he addressed that aspiration in detail. I chose to attend the University of Illinois for my doctoral work, in no small part because of that letter, which I still have. It turned out that he and a number of other faculty members at Illinois were role models for me moving forward with my career in academia. So, in 1962, I graduated from the University of Illinois with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, and began my career as a professor.

Getting involved with engineering education

As I started out as a professor, I wanted to make a positive impact in the lives of students through effective teaching. I had so many positive role models from all my levels of education—my parents and other professors from WVU, several professors from the Imperial College, as well as professors at Illinois—who all showed me what it takes to be a great professor in engineering. But in the 1960s, engineering education had not yet emerged as its own research discipline, so my research work continued in electrical engineering. However, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) had started its refereed journal IEEE Transactions on Education in 1958.

I began my involvement in engineering education by joining both the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the IEEE Education Society in 1962, right after graduating. I had accepted an offer to stay at the University of Illinois as an assistant professor and remained there for four years. But in 1966, an offer I previously received from Iowa State University was renewed, and I accepted it. Once at Iowa State, my involvement in the IEEE Education Society increased from being a member to being involved at an administrative level. Our department head at Iowa State, Warren B. Boast, was elected president of the Education Society in 1970. At the time, custom allowed the president to choose a secretary from his home campus, and I ended up with the job from 1970 through 1972. I was also the treasurer from 1971 to 1972, until I was selected as vice president in 1973, and from 1975 to 1976, I was the president of the society—all the while also serving on the administrative committee.

In 1982, I became editor of IEEE Transactions on Education. During my three years as editor, I had direct influence on the type of research we published, allowing me to help narrow the scope of articles published in that journal to help make it a more engineering education-specific research journal. It followed from what my predecessors had done, and those who followed me did even more. My work in both education societies continued through the 1980s, and in 1986, I was named a Fellow of ASEE, and in 1988, I was named a Fellow of IEEE “for contributions to engineering education.” In the early 1990s, I got involved in the development of the ASEE Journal of Engineering Education as the chairman of the publications committee. Being involved with the publication of engineering education research gave me an opportunity to help influence and facilitate some of the research being performed and published in engineering education.

Supporting colleagues through recognition

One other way I’ve tried to help facilitate engineering education research is by recognizing people for their work and nominating them for awards. A lot of work goes into fellow nominations, and I’ve been involved in quite a few, for both IEEE and ASEE. I believe it is very important for others in the field to know what wonderful work their peers are doing.

I’ve been involved in starting a few different awards for the different education societies. One such award is the Helen Plants Award, given for the best non-traditional presentation at the Frontiers in Education (FIE) conference, in honor of her creativity and contributions to the field of engineering education. Dr. Helen Plants was a superb teacher and an educator that I admired while I was an undergraduate at WVU. There is even an award given every year at the FIE conference from the IEEE Education Society in my name—the Edwin C. Jones, Jr. Meritorious Service Award for contributions to administrative efforts of the Society.

Part of effective society work is helping to organize conferences. Back in 1971, I, among others, was on the committee to start a conference for engineering education. The first FIE conference was sponsored by the IEEE Education Society and was organized by Benjamin Dasher at Georgia Institute of Technology. The first meeting was attended by just 100 people. But the conference grew, and in 1973, the Educational Research and Methods (ERM) division of ASEE officially became a co-sponsor, effectively doubling the size of the conference. Since then, FIE has continued to grow; in 2014 approximately 900 abstracts were submitted for consideration. I continue to attend this conference and celebrated my 80th birthday a few months before heading to Madrid for the 2014 annual conference.

Advancing engineering education through accreditation

Much of the work I have done in engineering education has been focused on accreditation. I started as an IEEE program evaluator for the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) in 1976; I have been a program evaluator for ASEE as well. I have been involved in all aspects of the accreditation process for electrical, computer, and general engineering programs around the nation and around the world. In the U.S., I have represented IEEE or ASEE on about 55 teams over the years and have chaired about 20 of them. I have also helped with accreditation and program development for international programs; in the last 35 years I’ve made about 60 trips internationally. For five years, I was the IEEE Representative to the Engineering Accreditation Commission; I was an IEEE Delegate to the Board of Directors for three years; and I was the IEEE Accreditation Committee Chairman for five years, as well. Although I have not held a top leadership position in ABET, I’ve been active in the operations for a very long time.

Accreditation offers a unique avenue for improving engineering education on an individual department level because of the emphasis ABET places on continuous improvement. We can also push faculty to keep up with the newest teaching techniques, to make sure departments all over the nation and world continue getting better, year after year. Even though I retired from Iowa State in 2001 as a professor emeritus, I continue to travel for ABET, as well as work as an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, helping with their systems engineering program.

What it’s all about: Working with students

I have been fortunate to work with outstanding students at two major universities and in other activities. They should challenge us, and they do. A special privilege I had, both at Illinois and at Iowa State, was working with honors program students. While I have not been able to keep up with all of them, I am aware of what many of them are doing, and they all make major contributions to our world. I like to think that I may have nudged them along their creative pathways, smoothed their way a bit, challenged them when it seemed appropriate, and stayed out of their way when I could only have inhibited them. Students and colleagues make a life in engineering education well worthwhile—and a privilege.

Photo provided by Dr. Jones.