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For American Scientist's 75th anniversary in 1986, we asked 75 eminent scientists and engineers their reasons for entering their fields. As part of our centennial celebraticms this year, we've asked [...]

Engineers in certain organizations in which technical upward movement is prematurely truncated must often move into management positions to attain continued upward career mobility. This transition is difficult for both those who make it and those who do not, and may cause good engineers to become derailed managers. On the basis of career stage theory, this study proposes an instrument to explore the career states of midcareer and older engineers. The sample came from 254 members of the Chinese Institute of Engineers in Taiwan. The proposed career stage measurement, which combines organizational position ranks and personal perceptions of autonomy and influence at work, provides a valid frame for tracking career stages. The results differentiate six career stages, including one composed mostly of engineers in middlelevel management positions who apparently have fallen off track. Compared with on-track careerists, these derailed managers perceive less job success and perceive fewer up-front managerial skill requirements. They appear less self-motivating and self-learning during their managerial transitions. Both the background of the sample, which offers some causes of this derailed situation, and the abilities that engineers need to avoid derailment as they progress from one managerial stage to another are presented. Index Terms--Career stage, derailment, engineering managers, managerial transition.

Newly recruited engineers entering organizations often experience anxiety and uncertainty with regard to their roles, tasks, and career prospects in the organization. Successful adjustment of these newcomers to the role and organization has implications for performance, retention, and turnover of valuable knowledge workers. Organizations use several tactics to facilitate the new engineer's adjustment to the role and organization. This study investigated the socialization of 135 new engineers using the theoretical framework of organizational socialization tactics. The moderating effects of gender on new engineer adjustment are also examined since engineering is often described as a male-dominated profession. Results show that organizational socialization tactics strongly influence newcomer role clarity, workgroup integration, and task mastery. These proximal outcomes, in turn, lead to increased satisfaction and organizational commitment. Gender-specific differences are also found with regard to the impact of tactics on outcomes. Gender-moderated the effects of investiture, serial, and fixed tactics on role clarity and work group integration. Implications of the results for practice and theory are discussed. Index Terms--Engineering management, organizational socialization, socialization tactics, technical professionals.

Engineers have traditionally focused on hard-skill knowledge acquisition, but the increasingly multicultural work practices of professional engineers now demand better soft-skill proficiency, such as foreign language ability, communication confidence, and cross-cultural experience. Students and staff within a university engineering department were surveyed to identify how cross-cultural language use potentially impacted academic and communication performance. The results indicate that engineering faculties may be concentrating on subject content at the expense of facilitating the development of soft skills. The findings suggest that students do experience problems with communication skills that may be exacerbated when studying in a second language. Lecturers need to become more energized to introduce innovative curriculum schemes, more proactive in developing challenging learning approaches, and more willing to integrate cross-cultural, language, and communication skills training into traditional engineering contexts. This case study has implications for any university engineering department where students are taught either partially or solely in a second language and where issues of communication and culture are recognized as impacting the professional development of engineers for the global workplace. CE Database keywords: Communication skills; Engineers; Training; Professional development.

Engineering appears to be at a turning point. It is evolving from an occupation that provides employers and clients with competent technical advice to a profession that serves the community in a socially responsible manner. Traditional engineering education caters to the former ideal, whereas increasingly both engineers themselves and their professional societies aspire to the latter. Employers are also requiring more from their engineering employees than technical proficiency. A new educational approach is needed to meet these changing requirements. It is no longer sufficient, nor even practical, to attempt to cram students full of technical knowledge in the hope that it will enable them to do whatever engineering task is required of them throughout their careers. A broader, more general approach is required that not only helps students to understand basic engineering principles but also gives them the ability to acquire more specialized knowledge as the need arises.

Raising and safeguarding the true professional status of the engineering discipline requires a restructuring of the educational system and the participation of professional engineers. Engineering schools should provide more communication and business courses for engineers, offer more hands-on learning and urge engineering professionals to teach. Practicing engineers should also act more professionally, work together and get more involved in efforts of uplifting the status of the engineering profession.

A decade ago, experts estimated the half-life of an engineer's technical skills, i.e., how long it takes for half of everything an engineer knows about his or her field to [...]

* Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) (Worcester, Massachusetts, USA) has received a $75,000 grant from the Kern Family Foundation to fund the second phase of a program aimed at 'preparing engineers [...]

An engineer believes that engineering students and young engineers are better equipped with the necessary skills in performing their field of expertise than senior engineers. Thus, engineering schools should provide a continuing education for senior engineers to enable them to learn new skills that are necessary for coping with technological changes. However, efforts towards continuing education credit for engineering professionals seem to benefit the bureaucracy rather than the practicing engineer.

Engineers often receive the stereotype of being number crunchers and problem solvers, not report writers and strong communicators. But the truth is that in the professional engineering world, strong communication [...]

Soil and water engineers understand the scientific interaction of plants, animals, and humans with natural resources including soil and water in the atmosphere, on the earth's surface, and underground. They [...]

Forest engineering applies physical, biological, and engineering sciences to solving problems in natural resources and environment, forest production systems, and related manufacturing industries. Engineering skills and expertise are needed to [...]

Engineering undergraduates need to be briefed on the practical aspects of the engineering profession as this will equip them with information and knowledge of job prospects and professional requirements of an engineering graduate. Visiting faculty imparting this kind of education include practicing engineers from the industry. This link established between the engineering industry and academies of engineering facilitates an understanding of the professional requirements of engineering in the light of undergraduate program and graduate research. Engineering industry avails itself of such contact established between industry and academic by recruiting competent new engineers.