It’s National Engineers Week.– a time set aside to recognize and thank all those engineers that make our lives safer, healthier, easier and more enjoyable.
In North Carolina, thousands of engineers are working for the citizens of NC every day. Electrical engineers in the energy industry are safely bringing power to your home and business. Environmental engineers are making sure you have access to clean water and that your environment is free of contaminants. Transportation engineers are building and maintaining your roads and bridges so you and your family can travel without worry. Structural engineers ensure the integrity of our buildings and mechanical engineers design the systems that keep them comfortable to work and live in. There are telecommunications engineers that design our sleek and modern mobile devices and computer and software engineers that are essential to both our work and home life. Agricultural and chemical engineers are vital to food and pharmaceutical production and biomedical engineers can be credited with the design of life-saving medical devices and advances in health care delivery systems.
The complexities and challenges in our society today will demand more from this profession than ever before and will require some of our best and brightest to pursue a career in one of its varied disciplines. This has been recognized at the national level recently as attention has been focused on “STEM”- science, technology, engineering and math education as an educational innovation. At the state level, education leaders and the engineering profession are going one step further and are already working to integrate engineering standards into the core K-12 curriculum in NC as a way not only to better prepare our students to solve “real world” problems but also as a means to meet North Carolina’s future workforce demands.
As our educational resources are challenged, it is more important than ever for business and industry to partner with our schools to bring relevancy and rigor to the classroom. Engineers understand more than many professions the responsibility they have to the public to ensure a strong legacy of future engineers. Perhaps the best way to recognize and thank an engineer this week is by encouraging a student to consider a career in engineering.
