 |
|
 |
 |
Engineering Community Seeks Greater Diversity With the number of women and minority professional engineers persistently low, engineering leaders take "first of many steps" to tackle a widespread problem. Faced with chronically small percentages of minorities and women in virtually every segment of engineering, more than 100 leaders from business, government, engineering societies, and education met in Washington, D.C., on October 27 to prepare for a major national program to attack this troubling industry pattern.
The ideas discussed at the summit will feed into a nationally coordinated strategy—one that actively involves industry, government, education, professional societies, and individual engineers to aggressively recruit minorities and women into engineering careers. The strategy is scheduled to be adopted by the Engineers Week coalition of some 70 societies and 60 corporations during the next National Engineers Week, February 20-26, 2000. The day-long summit, held at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, was described as "the first of many steps" by Patrick Natale, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers. For Natale, the new push is something of a personal victory. "I've been trying to promote this for 15 years," he said, "so I'm thankful it's reached this level of acceptance. The participation by corporations that we had there, the military, some of the Federal agencies, and, of course, the societies, shows that there is true interest in the whole issue of diversity in the workplace." Indeed, this initial meeting generated a robust exchange of ideas and opinions that, if nothing else, revealed the enormity of the challenge. While no one expects change to be easy, all participants agreed it was critical to continue to support such efforts to avoid aggravating a situation that shows little sign of changing despite other diversity improvement campaigns. Speakers at the summit noted that the nation's minority population is expanding rapidly. Currently, 72 percent of Americans are non-Latino Caucasians. By the middle of the next century, fully half of the population is expected to be people of color. Yet, only 14.6 percent of students currently in undergraduate engineering career tracks at colleges and universities are African American, Hispanic American, or American Indian. Only 18.9 percent are women. On the graduate level, only five percent are minorities and 17 percent are women. Even more problematic is the fact that, after years of slow but steady increases of minorities and women in higher education engineering courses, the latest figures indicate that minority and female enrollment has leveled off and even begun to decline. The statistics underscore the seriousness of the work that lies ahead for the summit, yet they also served to energize the meeting participants. "It is my hope that part of the ACEC/CH2M HILL legacy as co-chairs of National Engineers Week will be to increase the sense of urgency necessary to diversify our profession," said Leo Peters, President of the American Consulting Engineers Council. "The persistence of insufficient diversity in engineering professions requires equally persistent vigilance by the engineering community and an equally relentless national effort to increase the appeal of engineering to our nation's children." The group also looked at the coming shortage of American engineers of all ethnic backgrounds—a lack that could bring stagnation to the country's recent extraordinary success in high tech industries. Meanwhile, as pointed out by Jack Shaw, Chairman and CEO of Hughes Network Systems, a nation like Japan is graduating 10,000 more engineers annually than the United States, even though it has less than half the population. Organizers said that the summit made progress simply by examining the problem, and it was clear from participant comments that it provided fertile ground for creating solutions. Could, for example, the additional necessary engineers be found in the widening pool of minority students? Is it possible that more minorities and women would embrace engineering if they saw more people who looked like them working as engineers? To the latter question, most summit participants seemed to give an unqualified "yes." Ted Childs, IBM's Global Diversity Workforce Director, spoke of how his company needs a diverse workforce in order to appeal to its customers. "Our recruiting around the world has got to reflect the diversity of these countries that we're doing business in," he noted, "so that we look like the people that we serve." Childs led the summit with a rousing call to arms and offered this perspective: "In our industry, 350,000 jobs in America are going unfilled today. The challenge for the world is: 'Where are the workers?' 'Where is the talent?' My leadership team must look like my customers, the citizens of the world." Diane Creel, CEO of Earth Tech, provided insights on global diversity. "Fewer and fewer clients for our services will be white male Americans, as they have been in the past," she said. She added that the lesson had to be learned by engineering firms of all sizes. "Don't think for a minute that only the big firms will have to address diversity." Admiral Frank L. Bowman, director of the U.S. Navy's Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, told of the enormous benefit to recruiting women and minority engineers into the highest levels of his program. "If these talented, well educated, highly achieving young men and women don't see minority officers and women in command of our warships," he said, "the harsh reality is that they probably won't view the military in general, or my program in particular, as an opportunity to succeed in life." Delon Hampton, Chairman and CEO of Delon Hampton & Associates and the new president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, warned, "Minorities and women are essentially absent from the top leadership positions in engineering organizations, whether they be public, private, or educational. How can we expect young people to come into our profession if they don't see people that look like them at the top?" According to Jack Shaw of Hughes Network Systems, a more diverse workforce is, at the very least, basic good business. "The firms that succeed in serving heterogeneous markets usually have the benefit of a diverse staff," he said. He also emphasized that business benefits through higher employee retention, lower costs, more flexibility, and greater creativity. Despite the encouraging words, however, all participants agreed that the future of engineering was at a critical stage. "We need to send a message that you're welcomed here," Childs said of women and minorities. "We not only want you, we need you." # # # Editors: Click here for more excerpts from the Business of Diversity summit. Since its founding in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, National Engineers Week, a consortium of more than 100 engineering, scientific, education societies, and major corporations, has helped increase public awareness and appreciation of technology and the engineering profession. National Engineers Week 2000 co-chairs are the American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC), a national organization of private engineering firms, and CH2M HILL, a global engineering company specializing in water and wastewater, environmental management, transportation, telecommunications, industrial facilities, and related infrastructure.
|
 |
National Engineers Week Foundation
|