In standard accounts, the history of American engineering education began with the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1802. This was the first institution to offer formal instruction in civil and military engineering in North America. Through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, engineering education became increasingly widespread and professional, as this entry describes.

Early Education

If the ruins left by ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations are considered, then informal means of engineering education existed in the Americas long before colonists crossed the Atlantic. The pyramids at Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza provide evidence of early forms of engineering education in at least two ways. First, the ruins by their very structure imply a pattern of scientific organization and a familiarity with ...

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