Panel: Does the World Need More Engineers?

Organizer: Scott C. Douglas, SMU

Time: Monday, March 21, 13:00 - 15:00, Location: Room 111

Note: This panel session is free to attend by all. No food will be provided.

Engineering education is at a crossroads. There has been a decline in the number of students pursuing engineering degrees at colleges and universities in the U.S. over the past decade, during the largest boom in technology development society has ever seen. Many U.S. companies are looking to other countries for talent, either by hiring skilled foreign-born workers, many of whom are trained at U.S. universities, or by outsourcing. Some professional organizations, including the IEEE-USA, are battling with high-tech companies over U.S. visa legislation for foreign nationals. In the midst of all of this activity, there are engineers in the U.S. that are out of work and new technology-based companies starting in other parts of the world. What can we do as educators to affect this situation? And how have societal shifts changed the types of engineers that colleges and universities train in their undergraduate and graduate programs? Join us for a lively discussion on engineering talent, engineering education, and the future of our profession.

Panelists

• Vincent Poor, Princeton University
  (Recipient of the 2005 IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal and the 2004 IEEE EAB Major Educational Innovation Award)
• Gene Frantz, Texas Instruments, Inc.
  (TI Principal Fellow and past program manager for several Texas Instruments' products, including the Speak & Spell(TM) learning aid)
• Eli Fromm, Drexel University
  (Director of the Center for Educational Research at Drexel University and Recipient of the 2002 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering)
• Sanjit Mitra, University of California, Santa Barbara
  (Winner of numerous awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the IEEE Education Society, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, EURASIP, and the American Society of Engineering Education)