April 2007 Mechanical Engineering: Editorial

editorial

glad to be an engineer

By
John G. Falcioni,
Editor-in-Chief

It probably happened when you were 12 and tinkering with the tiny screws of an Erector Set to assemble a windmill, or maybe when you were 16 and figuring out a way to attach an engine to the balsa wood model airplane frame you had just built. Maybe it hit you when you were 18 and sitting puzzled in calculus class as your professor demonstrated a way to solve a problem. However it happened, you made the choice to become an engineer.

We surveyed readers last month—in our Question of the Month on M.E. Magazine Online—and found that nearly half of the respondents said they became engineers because they liked "creating and building things." Only a few said they went into engineering for the "prestige" of it all. And nearly a third said they liked solving problems. Six percent said they did it for the money. I can't help but wonder whether the prestige factor would have garnered more votes if we had conducted the poll in the 1960s, when many engineering students sought a job in the space industry.

Overall, we received many comments from readers who said they are happy with the choice they made to become engineers. Some of my favorite responses are below:

"I feel wonderfully alive when I am confronted with a problem that baffles me."

"Engineers can create wonders."

"I like discovering why and how things work, and [helping to] improve human life through the application of engineering."

"When I solve a problem, I feel at rest. I think it is an exercise for my brain."

"Engineering is my passion."

"I like solving challenging problems related to math, stress, loading analysis of structures, and applying it into a 3-D drawing."

What surprises me in the poll is that many of the respondents were younger engineers. The average age is about 25. Engineers are technology savvy and have presumably become well integrated online. If you believe, however, that the Internet is mainly a younger person's forum, then the age of the respondents doesn't surprise you.

Because we'd like to hear from a broader sample of engineers, we have created a Mechanical Engineering magazine community area in www. asme.org under Communities of Practice (http://cop.asme.org/COP), where I encourage you to tell us more about why you decided to become an engineer. (You can also access the Mechanical Engineering magazine community of practice from www. memagazine.org.) Once on the site, look for the Mechanical Engineering magazine community and post your comment about why you became an engineer. We hope that this area will be lively and stimulate great participation, so we encourage you to visit. Later in the year, we will publish an article describing the attributes we've found to represent the prototypical engineer.

•••

For this year's ASME Summer Annual Meeting in Toronto, to be held in June, ASME leaders, along with the editors of this magazine, have developed a special Think Tank Summit to be held on June 10 and 11. This summit will bring together leaders of industry, government, and academia in three 90-minute town hall-style discussions on three important and diverse topics:

• Teaching Women Engineering: A Double Standard?

• Fruits and Pitfalls of Product Lifecycle Management.

• Human Factor Engineering: Designing for the User.

For more about this summit, please visit www.asmeconferences.org/sam07/ThinkTank.cfm.