Support Organizations for the Engineering Community (1985) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-15
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Maintaining technical competence has a high priority for practicing members of the engineering community.
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This atmosphere requires interaction among the various engineering disciplines employed in the various sectors of the engineering community. Frequently, the urgency of maintaining technical competence over
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State registration laws provide the legal framework for enforcement of those standards affecting public welfare and safety, but the question of intraprofessional ethics and conduct is frequently outside that domain. Existing support organizations include professional and technical societies, engineering educational institutions, state legislatures, and state boards of registration.
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Although government-employed engineers express a desire to increase their state-of-the-art technical competence by performing hands-on technical work, negative pressures are exerted by engineers in private practice who regard this type of technical involvement as competition and therefore threatening. The following summary presents those specific needs identified as significant to a particular sector of the engineering community.
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Government Sector. The Government Sector Task Force comprised federal, state, and local government engineers who have been addressing similar issues on a continuing basis.
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Industry Sector. Because of the diversity and magnitude of the industry segment of the engineering community, this task force utilized questionnaires as a means of obtaining a consensus regarding the needs of the engineer in industry.
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One of the most interesting and perhaps most important findings of this study is the degree to which the engineering community is dependent upon various components of society at large for responses to its needs. Government, both legislative and administrative at all levels; broadspectrum educational institutions; financial and legal entities; the media, written and electronic all of these entities play a significant role in the support {or lack of support)
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The single biggest problem in overcoming this information gap is perceived to lie the media's lack of easily accessible sources responsible experts able and willing to answer questions, articulately and factually, on the fast-loreaking developments in our increasingly technological society. The panel took special note of the role played lay voluntary engineering associations and societies in support of both the individual engineer and the engineering profession.
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Examples in this category are the Society of Automotive Engineers, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Society for Agricultural Engineering, American Society of Naval Engineers, American Institute of Plant Engineers, American Railway Engineering Association, and American Society for Engineering Education, among others. This group develops and promulgates technical and nontechnical information about engineering practice within the occupational area concerned, but also engages in other technical and professional activities based on the interests of its members.
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If this estimate is accurate, it means that only about one-third of the practicing engineers in the United States have direct access to the support offered lay those soci et~es. Because the activities of professional/technical engineering societies reflect the interests of their members, it is not surprising that the panel discovered no overriding discontent as to their support for individual engineers or for the profession.
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. ac .mlulstratlons Industry ABET Mechanisms Program standards Co-op internship programs Program funding Sponsored research Professional/ technical meetings TV and radio Here, as in the case of the government sector, many of the needs of engineers in academia must be met by organizations external to the engineering community.
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The industrial sector identified the following key support organizations and mechanisms: Organizations Employing organizations Government agencies Workshops/seminars Technical publications Grants Achievement awards Professional/technical societies Investment groups Mechanisms Guidance programs Tax incentives Loans Press releases/documentaries An important function of external support organizations required by the industrial sector is the acknowledgment of the contributions of industry to the quality of life and growth of the economy and the corresponding recognition of what makes these contributions possible. Private Practice Sector.
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Conclusions The detailed work of the Panel on Support Organizations for the Engineering Community has been documented in a series of reports that present the findings of each sector task force Chapters 1 through 5~. For en understanding of the needs and support organizations for each sector, the reader is directed to these chapters.
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9. Similarly, the educational institutions are playing an active and effective role in meeting the needs of the engineering community.
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These organizations should continually reexamine their programs for adequacy in terms of the changing needs of the engineering profession. They should also look beyond their current constituencies, seeking ways to broaden their availability and service to the engineering community as a whole.
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