IEEE-USA President's Column

 

JULY-AUGUST 2007

One of IEEE-USA's strategic objectives is to encourage youngsters to become engineers. This helps ensure the competitiveness of the United States by providing a steady supply of new engineers to replace those retiring. As engineers it is our duty to bring the next generation of young people into our profession. Many long-term challenges are facing the world — from energy and health care to global warming and homeland security — and the future generation of engineers will play a major role in solving these problems. We must have a continuing supply of bright, innovative engineers to deal with these challenges.

IEEE-USA supports and encourages precollege students to study engineering. In 1984, we established a Precollege Education Committee to raise technical literacy of students by emphasizing math and science. The goal is to keep alive the innate curiosity of young children about science, engineering and mathematics as they move into middle school and high school, so they will be prepared to study engineering in college.

Later, as these students become young engineers they bring new ideas and new ways of thinking to the workplace. Their work will focus on providing solutions to the big challenges facing the world. We will see contributions, similar to those of past and present generations of engineers that will make our world a better place for all. More experienced engineers will benefit from the new ideas and approaches introduced by their younger colleagues.

Volunteers engaged in the many precollege initiatives sponsored by their companies, the IEEE and other organizations are performing a tremendous service to the profession. IEEE-USA's Precollege Education Committee, headed by Rama Shastra, is involved with many activities, including:

Design Squad (http://pbskids.org/designsquad)
Design Squad, a new PBS television series, is part reality competition, all engineering, and major fun. The Design Squad audience is 9 to 12 year olds. Viewers follow two teams of high-school students as they compete using their problem-solving skills to design, construct and test functional, whimsical machines.

IEEE-USA Teacher Reward/Grant Program (www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/pec/teacher-grants.html)
IEEE-USA's Precollege Teacher Reward/Grant Program helps teachers promote innovation and creativity.

Future City Competition (www.futurecity.org)
The Engineers Week Future City Competition provides a fun and exciting educational engineering program for seventh- and eighth-grade students. It combines a stimulating engineering challenge with a "hands-on" application to present students' vision of a city of tomorrow. The program was created at IEEE-USA's office and served as the IEEE's legacy project in 1993. We sponsor the Best Communications System award each year at the Future City Competition National Finals in Washington. Engineer-mentors are always needed.

JETS Competitions (www.jets.org)
The Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) National Engineering Design Challenge is a real-world challenge, for high school students, to help people with disabilities enter or advance in the workplace. Interested volunteers should e-mail nedc@jets.org. JETS TEAMS is an annual national competition for high school students with an interest in math, science and engineering applications. Interested volunteers should e-mail teams@jets.org.

TechXplore (www.techxplore.org)
TechXplore is a high-impact education program and competition that connects teams of students with technology professionals from high-tech companies to explore the world of technology. Together they propose solutions to real-world problems and address quality of life issues using technology, and then compete in an online competition with teams from around the world.

FIRST Robotics (www.usfirst.org)
FIRST Robotics Competition is a unique varsity mind sport designed to help high-school students discover how interesting and rewarding the life of engineers and researchers can be.

BEST Robotics (www.bestinc.org)
BEST is volunteer organization whose mission is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science and technology through participation in a sports-like robotics competition.

MATHCOUNTS (www.mathcounts.org)
MATHCOUNTS® is a national math enrichment, coaching and competition program that promotes middle school mathematics achievement.

This is just a sampling of the many exciting programs aimed at improving precollege education. I urge all of you to participate in these or similar activities. The work can be rewarding and exciting. And it will make a difference for many young girls and boys who might someday join us as practitioners in our exciting profession.

Updated:  10 July 2007
Contact: Pender M. McCarter, p.mccarter@ieee.org