Important Issues in Engineering Practice

I always start this letter by thanking you for your continued interest and readership, and as always I sincerely mean it. This installment will be the last Editor’s Letter I will be writing, as I’m stepping down as editor of LME effective with this issue. If you want to respond regarding this or any of the other offerings I’ve provide in this Journal, I encourage you to do so.

I’d like to end my tenure by sharing with you what I believe to be important issues in engineering practice today and, for the last time, challenge you to comment or, even better, submit an article regarding these important issues. Let me start by looking at the educational process, because we must first educate the next generation of engineers before we can address issues that they will face in the practice. We educate the majority of our future engineers in Morrill Act state land-grant universities. Over time this process has changed considerably and, in my humble opinion, it has improved significantly since my undergraduate days with my used Pickett slide rule and T-square. Engineering students now enter the practice with a higher level of understanding than we did simply because of advances in technology that allow them to work through assignments ten times faster than we were able to with a slip stick. Students can now develop designs because engineering drawings can be developed ten times faster, and better yet, designs can be modified almost instantly to produce different design scenarios. I believe, however, that the best thing that has happened to engineering education is the recognition, a couple of decades ago, that a continuous evaluation of the state of the practice should be made as it relates to a corresponding need for engineering educational change. Without getting into the details, this very comprehensive and thorough evaluation of the breadth and depth of the practice and the educational process was carried out by, among others, the National Academy, National Science Foundation, and ASCE. The work of these groups has resulted in recommendations for significant changes in the educational process that has, consequently, led to our engineering students being much better prepared to enter the practice than I feel I was upon graduation. There are hurtles and roadblocks, however, that have been placed in the path of ultimate success in this reform process; the most significant of these has been the statutorily mandated (money-driven) reduction in the number of credit hours engineering students take in order to graduate. Remember when we used to walk to school up hill (both ways through the snow) when we were undergraduates (about 150 credit hours)? Well, our legislatures, in order to reduce spending on higher education, have now reduced most engineering programs to less than 130 credit hours, some significantly less. Not to be denied in our efforts, ASCE has led the way to meeting this very concerning turn of events by issuing Policy Statement 465, which would require additional educational requirements (either a MS or thirty ABET-approved credit hours) in order to sit for the licensing examination. Bravo! This effort is grounded on the BOK (Body of Knowledge) that was established by a very dedicated and hard-working ASCE committee. Not to be deterred by initial success, a BOK2 Committee is now continuing the work to further define the original BOK of the practice. You may not realize how much effort and work was done on this and on the implementation of P.S. 465, but it is, and has been, a monumental effort; and, for the most part, it has been accomplished by volunteer engineers whose dedication can’t be appreciated enough.

P.S. 465 is very important to the practice if we want to continue to be considered professionals along with doctors, lawyers, and others. Let me get in a little plug here. My friend Jeff Russell, chairman of civil engineering at University of Wisconsin–Madison, and General Tom Lenox of ASCE, along with too many others to name here, have spearheaded the efforts to get states to accept P.S. 465. This ASCE committee has just made a significant breakthrough by getting concurrence from NCEES (the PE testing organization) to change the model law to include the P.S. 465 additional educational requirements for licensure. These dedicated engineers have accomplished this through tireless efforts over a number of years of sacrifice. With the educational changes that have and are taking place and the drive for implementation of P.S. 465, the practice of civil engineering has a very bright and expansive future. I hope that all of you readers will recognize and appreciate these efforts on your behalf. Let me end this section on the state of preparation for practice by encouraging all of you to seriously consider what I’ve written here. I hope you will be motivated to work through your professional organizations to endorse these efforts to implement the recommended changes, particularly P.S. 465. If you want to see the practice of engineering continue to be publicly accepted as a profession and not simply as a practice by technicians, then you will take action and support the efforts to implement P.S. 465 in your state.

Now that I’ve discussed the implementation of P.S. 465 as perhaps one of the most important issues facing the practice, I’ll simply follow with a brief list of other issues I feel are of concern to all of us as problems to work toward solving.

These are but a few of the important issues that face our practice and are of a concern to me. If they are of a concern to you, you can address them through your involvement at a local, state, or, even better, national level by becoming active on committees that address real issues facing the practice.

I want to thank you for your indulgence of my tenure here as the editor of this fine ASCE journal and encourage you to continue to contribute your opinions and articles. It’s “been a hoot” as they say, and I’ve really enjoyed this wonderful opportunity to serve. Remember, be active in the profession and not just in the practice.

“Difficulties are things that show what men are.”—EpictetusYour faithful servant,Chick Glagola, P.E.