Diversity forum envisions the future of engineering

Mary James Legatski
Center for Leadership & Diversity

CHICAGO — Have you ever taken a moment to consider what the future holds for the engineering profession? Participants in a diversity workshop here at ASME's International Mechanical Engineering Congress last month were given the opportunity to do just that.

"Strategic Diversity: Envisioning the Future of Engineering," sponsored by the Society's Center for Leadership & Diversity, (CFL&D) engaged participants of different backgrounds, ages, genders and ethnicities in a forward-looking exercise that examined the future state of the engineering profession.

From left to right: MTU ASME Student Section representatives Daniel Vanderhoff, Daniel Michalski and Nick Dumler; Todd Allen, CFL&D Board member and workshop facilitator.

Led by Todd Allen, an ASME member and Johnson & Johnson executive, the participants of the workshop were asked what they thought the future of engineering — including engineering education and careers — would look like.

Among the conclusions reached by workshop attendees was that engineering would provide solutions to three global dilemmas — food shortages, poverty and social problems — and that sustainable technology would be the norm, not the exception, in the future. More predictions for the future of engineering can be found at www.asme.org/Communities/Diversity.

In conjunction with the workshop, the CFL&D sponsored an original competition for ASME student sections in the Chicago area in which the students were asked to describe their vision of "Engineering in the Future" in a short essay. Johnson & Johnson's office of diversity donated $1,000 in awards. In addition, the winning student section was invited to present its winning entry to workshop attendees.

Participants at the diversity forum were asked to put together lists describing how they pictured the future of engineering education and the engineering profession.

Michigan Technological University's ASME student section placed first in the competition. Nick Dumler, section president; Daniel Vanderhoof, section vice president; and Daniel Michalski, a second-year mechanical engineering student, presented their chapter's award-winning entry of "Envisioning the Future of Engineering," a portion of which appears below.

"At what point are we satisfied with the state of engineering? Assuming that we can even reach that point, to us it is when anything physical that the individual desires can be created without any human effort... Solar energy has become 100 percent efficient, and energy from the sun can be used to create the elemental atoms needed for a product… Due to the fact that everything someone could want can be created for free, there is no need for human labor. Life is based on self-enjoyment. Every individual is content and almost anything they want they can have. Thus, there is no war or greed."

To read the MTU entry "Envisioning the Future of Engineering" in its entirety, visit www.asme.org/Communities/Diversity.

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