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

ENGINEERING AROUND THE WORLD■ Providing the flexibility in engineering curricula to pursuea variety of careers with an engineering background.■ Expanding research-based and student-centered learningapproaches in the undergraduate engineering curriculum.100■Educating engineers for leadership in an increasingly technologicalsociety by broadening engineering education andemphasizing communication, teamwork, policy, environmentand ethics.U.S. National Academy of EngineeringGrand Challenges■ Make solar energy economical■ Provide energy from fusion■■■Develop carbon sequestration methodsManage the nitrogen cycleProvide access to clean water■ Restore and improve urban infrastructure■Developing a variety of lifelong learning programmes inengineering, as well as the innovative use of on-line learningtools.■■■Advance health informaticsEngineer better medicinesReverse-engineer the brain■Developing various initiatives to attract under-representedgroups (i.e. women, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans,Native-Americans) to engineering, and to attract domesticstudents to graduate studies in engineering. 101■ Emphasizing, throughout the engineering curriculum, notjust the technology, the benefits that engineers bring tosociety.Action by the U.S. National Academy of EngineeringMuch of what will be exciting and valuable in the twentyfirstcentury will be the work of engineers who will move tinysystems technology into macro-systems applications. Forexample, the application of bio-based materials design andproduction, personalized predictive medicine, biofuels, andnanotechnology based energy production and storage devices.These engineers and researchers, driven by ‘fire in the belly’and their obsessive concentration on solving challenging puzzles,will be the ones to take us forward. In an effort to encouragesuch exploration and initiative, the U.S. National Academyof Engineering announced in February 2008, fourteen grandchallenges of the twenty-first century.One of dominant themes over the next century is likely to besustainability of the planet, and five of the grand challengeslisted above relate to this theme. As our global society seeksways to maintain itself in a sustainable way relative to the environment,it will be up to engineers to find ways to do suchthings as make solar power economical, provide energy fromfusion, and develop methods to pull carbon dioxide out ofthe atmosphere and store it in the Earth’s crust. Engineers willalso play an important role, alongside doctors and medicalresearchers, in improving human health by developing better100 A National Academy of Engineering Committee, Understanding and Improving K-12Engineering Education in the U.S., will release a report in 2009 on pre-college engineeringeducation. Go to: http://www.nae.edu101 National Academy of Engineering’s, Engineer Your Life, is an example. Go to: http://www.engineeryourlife.org.■■■■■Prevent nuclear terrorSecure cyberspaceEnhance virtual realityAdvance personalized learningEngineer the tools of scientific discoveryways to store, analyse, and communicate health information,and by designing more effective drugs. Because today’s powerfultechnologies offer many opportunities for misuse, anotherjob of engineers will be to find ways to prevent such misusewhenever possible, for example, by thwarting terrorists whowould use nuclear terror and by securing cyberspace. Finally,engineers in the coming century will have a major role toplay in enhancing human capacities by advancing personalizedlearning and engineering tools of scientific discovery forexample.So, meeting some of these challenges is imperative for humansurvival. Meeting others will make us more secure againstnatural and human threats. Meeting any of them will improvequality of life. The twenty-first century will be very differentfrom the twentieth century. Engineering will be enormouslyexciting and it will also be increasingly rich and complex in itscontext and importance.CanadaDarrel John DanylukEngineering in Canada is a regulated profession, and all engineersresponsible for engineering work require a licence fromthe provincial or territorial jurisdiction in which they practice.There are six engineering organizations that represent elementsof the engineering profession in Canada. These are:239