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Finding the Engineers We Need. Linda Sanford Senior Vice President Of IBM's Storage Systems Group And An Engineer With IBM For Over 25 Years
Go for a ride in a car or on a plane, answer the phone or even get a drink of water from your faucet—it's hard to think of any daily task that hasn't been made possible or easier by the work of engineers. Without them, our entire way of life might not exist, nor would our chances of improving it. Oddly enough, though, we are training far too few engineers for the world we hope to build. The META Group, an industry analyst firm, reports that approximately 400,000 information technology jobs are vacant in America today. The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that this field will create an additional 5.3 million jobs by 2008. A large part of this shortage has been brought on by the rapid growth of the Internet and the online world of e-business. While this world offers tremendous advantages—new markets, better economies, more equitable access to a wealth of knowledge—it also requires highly skilled engineers to build and maintain it. But if we don't get more of our young people involved in technology and engineering soon, we'll be confronting a frightening pros-pect: our technologically advanced world will become an unmanageable tangle of high-tech gadgets more akin to the dirt roads and foot bridges of centuries ago than the information super highway we all so loudly declared just five years ago. How do we tackle this problem? Education is a good start. How many young people really understand the range of an engineer's potential for creativity—from cars with radios for music, to space probes with radios for guidance. And things that touch us personally: the computer chip that enables a paralyzed man to walk, or specialized software that guides a surgeon's hands during brain surgery to help a patient with Parkinson's disease. Engineering's potential knows no limits. National Engineers Week (NEW) seeks to promote this education, especially by K-12 and mentoring programs. But a more targeted approach is warranted now. In fact, a viable solution to the shortage of engineers is surprisingly obvious. Raise the proportion of women in the field, and we can dramatically increase the overall number of engineers. Though other professions include large numbers of women—lawyers and doctors, 30 percent; accountants, 60 percent—science, engineering and technology lag far behind: only 9.8 percent of American engineers are women (according to recent surveys by the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering and Technology). Current studies of engineering schools show that women have earned only 15 percent of the bachelor of science degrees and less than half that percentage of doctorates. These trends are not promising, but we can turn things around. NEW is launching “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day”, providing an excellent forum to demonstrate the engaging careers engineers enjoy and the problems they solve. And last summer, companies like IBM and Intel started bringing youngsters to their labs for technical summer camp. In one lab, middle-school girls created both online and physical spaces where they collaborated on the laudable goal of reducing violence in the world. The Douglass Project for Rutgers Women in Math, Science and Engineering uses mentoring to break down impediments. Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou, the chair of the biomedical engineering department (and designer of the software mentioned earlier that assists surgeons working with Parkinson's patients) serves as a mentor in this program. Innovative educational and mentoring programs like these are multiplying. And the more volunteers these programs attract, the more quickly these trends can be turned around. That's why I urge engineers —men and women — to participate in National Engineers Week 2001 and to do so with an emphasis on attracting women to the field. Consider mentoring a young woman during the year—help her understand the profession and its many opportunities, show her that engineering can be fun and make a difference in the world. Most importantly, show her that she has what it takes to BE an engineer and make the world of the future a better place. |
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National Engineers Week Foundation
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