President's Monthly Message
February 2008

Our Week To Reach Out

Engineers Week (EWeek) 2008 is taking place this month (February 17-23). This is the time of year when the public joins in a nationwide celebration of the engineering profession. ASCE is a founding member of a national Engineers Week coalition that brings together more than 75 engineering, professional, and technical societies and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. In 2010, ASCE will again chair Engineers Week, the third time it has done so since 1994. The week is an ideal way for ASCE to advance many of our strategic goals and to engage in activities that promote our profession. The Engineers Week coalition is dedicated to building a dynamic engineering profession by working toward an ethnically diverse and well-educated engineering workforce and raising precollege performance levels in math and science.

ASCE’s sections and branches are active in initiating and hosting Engineers Week activities while working with other interested organizations. Although the week falls in February, it is meant to increase public understanding of engineering all year long through innovative programs and celebrations around the country.

For a great example of how a section can work with other groups on outreach during the year, look at our Maryland Section. For years, the section has taken advantage of Engineers Week resources and run activities involving various engineering societies. The successful teamwork exhibited by organizations this year in Maryland has resulted in more than 17 challenges being offered at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. The Future City Competition gives participating teams an opportunity to design a city of the future with the aid of SimCity software. Other activities challenge students to construct bridges using glue and small pieces of basswood or drinking straws. The bridges thus designed must also be able to handle specified live loads. Engineers Week serves to boost momentum for local activities and to offer stimulating new ideas for outreach endeavors.

Some of the most exciting activities this year are linked to the TV series Design Squad, produced by WGBH, of Boston. ASCE's partnership with WGBH in the series Building Big and in the outreach program ZOOM into Engineering laid the groundwork for this series. The outreach activities during Engineers Week that are linked to it have been designed to introduce kids and their families to the engineering design process. ASCE is a leading supporter of Design Squad and is represented on the advisory and funding board. Contributions from ASCE members helped with initial funding, and many ASCE members conduct outreach activities linked to the series throughout the year. Resources, training, and outreach materials are available from ASCE for conducting these activities. For example, in workshops conducted prior to our regional leadership conferences in January and February, members were acquainted not only with the outreach programs linked to Design Squad but also with a variety of other endeavors designed to foster and interest in science and engineering in precollege students at all grade levels. Design Squad’s new season includes an online competition with the theme “trash to treasure” that invites viewers to find new purposes for old items. Contest rules are to be announced in conjunction with Engineers Week. Additional information and streaming video of episodes are available at www.pbskids.org/designsquad.

The Discover Engineering Family Day Festival is sponsored annually by Engineers Week and the National Building Museum, in Washington, D.C. Every year thousands of children of all ages eagerly pack the museum’s main hall to experience the exciting challenges of engineering. This year, the event will take place February 16 and will feature dozens of hands-on activities for kids devised by local engineering chapters and national organizations, including ASCE’s National Capital Section. The day will also feature appearances by Nate Hall, a host of Design Squad, and by Digit, one of the characters in the PBS series Cyberchase. More information is available at http://eweekdcfamilyday.org/.

As part of the Engineers Week coalition, ASCE is an informal outreach partner for Cyberchase, the only mathematics series for children on American television. The sixth season focuses on math in building and sports. Produced for students ranging in age from 8 to 12, each episode delivers positive messages about math by teaching concepts in a way that youngsters can understand and enjoy. Assistance is provided by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Cyberchase is broadcast on more than 350 PBS stations nationwide. Visit http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/.

ASCE is also partnering with Scholastic and Universal Studios in promoting an outreach program linked to the PBS series Curious George, which is geared to students from kindergarten to grade 5. ASCE is taking the lead in soliciting volunteer support from the engineering community to support educators who are interested in using the Curious George curriculum.

Each year ASCE pays tribute to outstanding young civil engineers in connect with New Faces of Engineering, an Engineers Week program that showcases the accomplishments of young professionals from all engineering disciplines. This year’s “new face” in civil engineering is Javier Moncada, who is being recognized for his research work on the earthquake that struck southern Asia on December 26, 2004, and took a heavy toll of life through tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. Moncada has also done volunteer work building schools and educating youth about coastal engineering and has established an ASCE renewable energy and sustainability technical group. ASCE solicits nominations of outstanding young (up to age 30) civil engineers for this program. We shine the spotlight on these accomplished young civil engineers, highlighting their professional contributions and the benefits these contributions confer on society as a whole. Profiles of those selected for the New Faces of Engineering program are published in USA Today.

As mentioned above, the Future City Competition (www.futurecity.org/) looms large in the activities that form part of Engineers Week. Now in its 16th year, the contest is engaging the interest of more than 30,000 middle-school students from a record-breaking 1,111 schools around the country. Student teams work with teachers and volunteer engineers to envision the future and construct models of the cities of tomorrow. The teams presented their entries at regional competitions in January. The regional winners will travel to Washington for the final round, which will be held February 18-20. The competition provides an exciting educational engineering program for middle school students and also puts a premium on teamwork, good communication, and problem solving. ASCE sections and branches host competitions across the country. Many of them, along with a variety of outreach activities, are funded through ASCE’s State Public Affairs Grant Program. To apply for a grant, members should visit the ASCE Web site to obtain guidelines on submitting proposals (www.asce.org/inside/spag.cfm).

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2008—February 21—will provide an excellent opportunity for ASCE members to take part in mentoring activities and to acquaint girls with the challenges and opportunities that await them in engineering. Thousands of women engineers and their male counterparts will be doing just that in activities built around this day. For information about events planned around the country, visit http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/2008_nationalpledgeroster.shtml.

Engineer Your Life, also part of Engineers Week, is a campaign that has grown out of the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project (EWEP). It will be launched on February 20, the day before Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2008. ASCE has served in a leadership role in the EWEP coalition and is intent on promoting efforts to encourage young women to consider careers in engineering. Engineer Your Life hopes to have a national effect on the way engineering careers are presented, particularly to girls in high school who are planning to attend college. Various messages in this vein have been developed and tested as part of the EWEP, and these will form the centerpiece of the Engineer Your Life campaign and Web site, www.engineeryourlife.org.

These programs are just some of the resources available to your section or branch. With them you can host an exciting program that will help students gain an insight into our profession. Why not organize a group of interested organizations and make outreach a priority during 2008? Engineers Week is an ideal time to launch your program. To learn more, visit www.eweek.org/.