Beyond BOK

New in this issue of LME is a “Letters to the Editor” section showcasing reader responses to topics I have discussed in previous “Editor’s Letters.” Reader feedback is one of the things I hope to achieve by editorializing on issues that are current and possibly controversial. To this end, I welcome your opinions and your comments related to LME and its content and will publish as many of your responses in this new section as space permits.

In my last letter I wrote a little bit about the Body of Knowledge (BOK) that has been developed by a task committee of ASCE members representing both practitioners and academics. Now I am eager for input from you, the practitioner, regarding what you see as the principal concerns of engineering practice and how you may use the BOK resourcefully within your firm. The BOK that new graduates bring into the practice is only the beginning; the full development of this knowledge in the practice is a separate issue. Given that the education of our young engineers is made sufficient through implementation of the BOK in our colleges and universities, can we as practitioners ensure that our newly graduated engineers are provided with the professional environment that will allow them to use this basic knowledge and develop it into professional skills? Will we be able to help them deal with this postbaccalaureate challenge? Knowledge brought into the practice but not nurtured will, in most cases, become atrophied unless companies address our twenty-first-century challenges.

The BOK presents a map for education of our new engineers in the undergraduate educational process, and it also provides guidance for full development within the practice. I believe the next major challenge is not to change the way we educate our new engineers, given that we now have the BOK, but how we educate our seasoned engineers. Having gone through school using a slide rule, I can certainly appreciate how much the engineering practice has changed. Many of us know individual engineers in private practice who still refuse to use CAD and make all of their structural drawings by hand. Many of us know engineers in very large firms who now have lost some of their general engineering knowledge because they have been pigeon-holed into a small practice area for a number of years. I’m concerned that continuing and diversified education within ever-evolving and important areas of our practice not be overlooked due to the lack of an ongoing and broad-based professional development component within firms. In many specialty firms, continuing education will ordinarily consist of more specialized training, but it does not necessarily address the more current issues such as concerns for international practice, environmental impacts, economic considerations, conservation of resources, and other very real challenges to the practice. If engineering graduates are to successfully transition to the workplace and develop into twenty-first-century engineers, we, in our practices, must make internal changes to close the loop on the BOK by picking up where the universities leave off. The BOK can be an excellent reference for addressing these internal challenges.

I therefore ask you for ideas related to new LME issues. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) requires that universities prepare our graduates for “lifelong learning.” As I noted, I believe that this responsibility should be shouldered by leaders of professional engineering firms rather than by our universities or professional boards alone. Following is a list of some topics I feel are very important in the full development of our graduates into professionals:This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of the developmental challenges facing our practice; it is merely a start. I ask you, as practitioners, for responses to this list. What are your challenges? What is changing in the workplace that should be of concern to all of us? How can we meet these demands?

If you don’t agree with this editorial or would simply like to comment, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me or give me a call. I also encourage you to consider writing feature articles for this publication or submitting Forum material that you think would be worth sharing with our other readers.

“You may be disappointed if you fail but you are doomed if you don’t try.”—Beverly Sills, famous opera divaYour faithful servant,Chick Glagola, P.E.