History of JEE

The earliest origins of the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) can be traced to the World’s Engineering Congress held in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893. Following that conference, the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education was formed and its first conference proceedings were published in 1894.  The society subsequently became the American Society for Engineering Education. The annual conference and its proceedings served as the principal means of communication among the membership for the first seventeen years of the society.

By 1910 the society membership had grown sufficiently to warrant publication of a monthly periodical “devoted to technical education,” called the Bulletin of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education. It changed names twice over the next eighty-one years, first to Journal of Engineering Education (1925–1969) and then to Engineering Education (1969–1991). During this time, the periodical served a dual mission for the society. It was both a magazine for the dissemination of society communications as well as a journal to publish ideas and innovations on engineering education.

In 1991, two publications were created to fulfill the dual mission: PRISM premiered in November 1991 as the principal monthly magazine for society communications, and Engineering Education was renamed in January 1993 as the Journal of Engineering Education and repositioned to be the society’s quarterly “scholarly professional journal”. This repositioning was driven in part by the national events in the 1980s and especially by the rapidly expanding support for engineering education by the U.S. National Science Foundation following the 1986 National Science Board report, Undergraduate Science, Mathematics and Engineering Education.  Indeed, the journal was repositioned with support from a grant by the National Science Foundation.

With each passing year, articles appearing in the journal reflected increasing sophistication in the use of scientific and pedagogical protocols and principles in the educational innovations presented.  In response to the rising expectations of the journal’s reviewers and the increasing scholarly quality of the articles submitted, the journal was repositioned again in January 2003 and introduced a more focused mission: “to serve as an archival record of scholarly research in engineering education”. The journal also introduced review criteria consistent with that mission.  Thus, the Journal of Engineering Education became the first journal in the global engineering community dedicated solely to the publication of research in engineering education. This was a major milestone for the engineering community and for the journal.

Soon after its repositioning in 2003, the journal introduced its first five-year strategic plan, 2005-2010, in which it made clear that the journal was more than a place to publish papers—it was a vital partner in the global community of stakeholders dedicated to advancing scholarship in engineering education.  Through its two goals and ten initiatives, the journal rapidly advanced to become a premier education research journal in engineering being rated in the top 5 percent of 21,000 international journals.  Now published in partnership with a growing community of international engineering and education societies and associations, its distribution has grown to nearly 10,000 readers in 80 countries by its centennial year in 2010.

Today, as the journal enters its second century of service, the Journal of Engineering Education continues to be a major player in the advancement of research in engineering education through its second five-year strategic plan, 2011-2016.  We invite you to join with JEE as we seek to improve global engineering education practice and research.