Panelists Tackle Tough Issues at the Inaugural ASME Decision Point Dialogues

Panelists Tackle Tough Issues at the Inaugural ASME Decision Point Dialogues Panelists Tackle Tough Issues at the Inaugural ASME Decision Point Dialogues ASME President Marc W. Goldsmith was one of a dozen engineering and science thought leaders from industry, academia and the global development space who gathered in New York last week to discuss the challenges facing engineering education and the engineering profession during the inaugural installment of the ASME Decision Point Dialogues series.Will Engineers Be True international herausforderung Solvers? was the theme of the spirited discussion, which took place April 17 at the State University of New Yorks Global Center. The program was conceived and organized by the Workforce Strategy Execution team in partnership with the Engineering for Global Development group and with participation from ASMEs various departments.Moderated by Robert J. Jackson, Jr., associate professor and Milton Handler Fellow at Columbia Law School, the even ing was structured as a Socratic dialogue, a format in which a small group of experts led by a facilitator try to find clear-cut answers to questions that dont have simple solutions. The evenings discussion revolved around a mock scenario involving a female middle-school student pursuing an engineering career in the U.S., a boy in Zambia intent on fixing his villages water pump, and a middle-school teacher considering leaving education for more lucrative opportunities. (From left) ASME President Marc Goldsmith, Florence Hudson of IBM, Ron Hira from Rochester Institute of Technology, and Joseph Sussman of ABET were among the thought leaders who participated in the ASME Decision Point Dialogues panel discussion in New York on April 17. Addressing the subject of the teacher reaching that crossroads in his career, ASME President Goldsmith emphasized the crucial role these educators play in steering young people toward engineering and other STEM professions.Middle-school teachers are absolute critical players in influencing young kids toward their careers, Goldsmith said. And we want to keep those with a passion for teaching math and science and engineering and technology in those positions. Those passionate teachers are critical, and theres a shortage of them. They need to be celebrated. For its part, ASME has created recognition programs for teachers - such as the DiscoverE Educator Award program that was launched last year - to do just that.Javaris Powell, a teacher and administrator at Friendship Public Charter School and one of the inaugural DiscoverE Educator Award recipients, added that the emphasis on improving standardized test scores has many middle schools radically reducing the amount of science in their curricula.A crisis does exist, Powell said. If you look at our student scores on placement tests with math and science, they have been plummeting over the past 25 years. Regarding standardized tests, Powell noted that science is not as sessed. So the major focus becomes reading and mathematics. So if reading and mathematics are being emphasized, some schools are actually feeling presaya to make sure they increase their standardized test scores by sacrificing instruction in science. ASME Board of Governors member Richard Benson (left), dean of engineering at Virginia Tech, and Engineers Without Borders-USA founder Bernard Amadei, were also among the panelists. By the end of the two-hour event, the discussion had covered a variety of issues including keeping university engineering programs up-to-date with the demands of the profession, the problems associated with maintaining water pumps and systems in developing countries, the outsourcing of engineering and IT jobs outside the United States, and efforts to increase the number of women in the engineering workforce.The vision for the Decision Point Dialogues series goes well beyond our event in New York City. In fact, the event was only the starting p oint. The Socratic dialogues program is one element in a movement supporting ASME thought leadership initiatives, said John Falcioni, editor-in-chief of Mechanical Engineering magazine. Falcioni, along with Noha El-Ghobashy, director of ASMEs Engineering for Global Development enterprise, convened the event.While the first dialogue was envisioned to touch on a broad range of conflict points, Falcioni added that ASME will continue these discussions of difficult issues in subsequent Decision Point Dialogue events and also through online communities that are being developed on ASME.org. ASME is a catalyst, Falcioni said. It is a rightful convener of critical conversations that impact not only engineering workforce development but numerous other areas - including the global economy, global development, and healthcare to name only a few. The mission of ASME is to help improve the lives of people globally. The impact of this program will ultimately be measured by how it supports that go al.In addition to Goldsmith and Powell, the panel at the New York event also included Bernard Amadei, founder of Engineers Without Borders-USA ASME Board of Governors member Richard Benson, dean of engineering at Virginia Tech Liza Billings, engineering student and consultant at Grant Engineering Daniel Ingnacio Garcia, founder, aufstrebend Engineers Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology Florence Hudson, corporate strategy executive at IBM Emeka Okafor, curator for Maker Faire Africa Andrew Reynolds, senior advisor for the Department of States Office of Space and Advanced Technologies Joseph Sussman, managing director and chief information officer for ABET and Jessica Townsend, associate dean for curriculum and academic programs at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.The ASME Decision Point Dialogues program, Will Engineers Be True Global Problem Solvers? will air online - on ASME.org - in June.