Similar to our previous post, Changing the Message: Perception of Engineering, the February 23, 2009 edition of EE Times includes two commentary articles that address concern about the perception of an engineering career and ways to improve how others view engineers.

Together, these two articles are titled, “A Call to Arms.” 

The first article is entitled “Time to Fix Engineering’s Branding Problem.”  The author, Dylan McGrath, relates the highlights of a presentation made by John Cohn, an IBM fellow, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference.  The two main points Mr. Cohn made were, 1) “Kids are not interested in studying engineering, and people who love the field need to do something about that” and 2) “Engineering is not boring.”    

This article goes on to say that Mr. Cohn feels that there is “a huge disconnect between the public’s perception of engineering and the work that most engineers do.”  He sited survey results that showed individuals do not associate engineering with “social values” such as caring for the community or saving lives.  As so, the author concludes, “in marketing terms, engineering has a branding problem.  Kids aren’t buying into the profession because they don’t understand what it is truly selling, and what they think it is selling does not appeal to them.”

So what can be done about this situation?  Well, it is reported that Mr. Cohn spends much of his time doing “engineering outreach” in schools, churches, and clubs.  He speaks with these groups about what he does, and highlights the importance and rewards of engineering.  And he actually demonstrates to them that engineering can be interesting and fun.  He is encouraging others engineers to also get involved in a similar way.  His web site,  http://www.johncohn.org offers some resources to help in this regard.

Near the end of the article the statement is made, “given the challenges confronting us, the world needs engineers now as much as ever – perhaps more than ever.”

In our next post we will consider the second article, “Hands-on Programs Convey Engineering’s Cool Factor” by Ray Almgren and Lars Nyengaard. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Education, Other, Professional Organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.