Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT■■■to promote cooperation between industry and educatorson a national and international basis;to assist existing national societies of engineers and engineeringtechnicians and groups of educators of engineersand engineering technicians in their efforts to improve engineeringeducation; andto assist in the establishment of societies or groups of engineeringtechnicians for this purpose where they do notalready exist.The membership of AEESEAPAEESEAP has a comprehensive range of membership classes.These are as follows: Voting Members, Ordinary Members,Individual Members, Supporting Members, CorrespondentMembers, Honorary Members and Subscribing Library Members.Voting members are key to the operation of the Associationas the representatives of the voting members also formthe AEESEAP Executive Committee and thus act as the boardof the Association. The voting members are drawn from fifteencountries in the region. Sadly, some of the voting membershave not been in active membership for some time and arein arrears with their subscriptions. A continuing problem inthis context is that the individuals who are the nominated representativesof the voting members often change and it hasproved difficult to contact the responsible persons, notingthat the voting members are institutions or agencies and notindividuals. A determined effort is now underway to overcomethis problem and to restore the membership base such that anemphasis will be placed on rebuilding the base of committedvoting members as national representatives.Recent activitiesThe AEESEAP secretariat and presidency is rotated betweenfifteen member countries at three-year intervals and is currentlylocated in New Zealand, the last handover having takenplace early this year in February 2007. Prior locations werethe Philippines followed by Indonesia and then Malaysia. Themost recent handover took place in Kuala Lumpur in Februaryin association with an AEESEAP Regional Symposium onEngineering Education with the theme ‘New Strategies in EngineeringEducation’. Over fifty papers were presented at thesymposium with two thirds on matters of curriculum designand delivery and one third on technological themes. In additionto the curriculum and technical papers, the traditionalcountry reports on the state of engineering education in thecountries of the voting members were presented.Consideration of the patterns that have been emerging forsome time and the events briefly detailed above led to the conclusionthat the presence of the AEESEAP secretariat typicallyleads to activities appropriate to a national or local regionalassociation where one does not exist or is inactive. Here itmust be made very clear that in presenting this analysis, nocriticism is implied or intended of the recent AEESEAP officebearers from Malaysia or before them, Indonesia. What hasbecome clear is that although the aims and goals of AEESEAPremain relevant to the region, the activities that gain supportin pursuit of these goals have changed.Thirty-five years of dynamic change in the regionAs the economies of the nations in the region served by AEE-SEAP change from underdeveloped to developing and then todeveloped or mature, a corresponding change occurs in engineeringeducation and accreditation systems – though this isobserved to be somewhat ad hoc. Since AEESEAP was established,international engineering accreditation systems have alsobeen developed. Such systems are most fully developed andapplied at the level of professional degrees, usually four year,accredited through for example the Washington Accord. Thisaccord was established in 1983 with AEESEAP nations Australiaand New Zealand as two of the original signatories. Currently, ofAEESEAP members, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea andSingapore are full signatories of the Washington Accord, withMalaysia a provisional member and several nations in the regioncurrently working towards provisional membership as a steptowards full membership. The Washington Accord is essentiallya system for accrediting national accreditation systems andsubsequently for mutual recognition of accreditation decisionsmade by the national bodies at the institution, usually universityand degree major level. In recent years, similar systems havebeen developed for engineering technician degrees through theSydney Accord, and for technician diplomas through the DublinAccord. Once nations have achieved membership of theseaccords, many of the aims of AEESEAP are seen to have beenachieved, at least on a national basis.Future directions for AEESEAPFor AEESEAP to survive and to play a useful role in the region,consideration must be given to the factors discussed abovewhich are: the rapid industrialization and surge to prosperity ofseveral AEESEAP nations, the development of national societiesdevoted to engineering education, the increasing involvement ofthe AEESEAP Members and Potential Members in internationalaccreditation agreements and, not discussed but of importancehere, the increasing internationalization in scope and view oftrans-global learned societies including IEEE and IET (formallyIEE). Consideration of these factors leads to the suggestion thatthe future role of AEESEAP may be to act as a regional forumfor national engineering societies and as a source of advice andexpertise to nations as they seek to develop engineering educationand the related accreditation systems.ConclusionsIn the thirty-five years of its existence, AEESEAP has played auseful role in the region served through both the developmentof international personal networks and the provision of con-148