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Inspiring the Next Generation of Engineers

By Jessica Davis -- Electronic News, 4/6/2006

SAN JOSE -- The statistics are startling. The U.S. engineering population is aging and the number of engineering graduates from U.S.-based universities is dwarfed by the number of graduates from universities elsewhere – China and India, in particular.

It paints a bleak picture of the future of engineering in the United States, with current engineers retiring soon and too few grads to replace them.

And while a new study from Duke University calls into question the validity of some of those numbers, which have been reported in a number of studies, many executives in the semiconductor industry agree that the United States is not doing enough to inspire kindergarteners through 12th graders to want to become the next generation of engineers.

How to turn that trend around was the focus of a panel of industry executives this week at the Embedded Systems Conference.

“The solution I see starts with us,” said Misha Burich, senior VP of software and systems engineering at Altera, who called for engineers to volunteer at schools. Burich is originally from Yugoslavia, bringing another point of view to the U.S. education debate.

“Instead of being soccer dads and moms let’s be science dads and moms,” he said. Burich believes that such activity must be done on an individual and volunteer basis because it would be too difficult to mobilize such an effort on a corporate level.

To prepare for his presentation on the Engineering for Humanity panel this week at ESC, Burich asked engineers at Altera what inspired them to become engineers and how they themselves encourage kids to pursue it as a career.

“They said one of the most important things in their lives that made them go into engineering was their parents,” he said. “Their parents encouraged them to play with Lego blocks, to ask questions about nature, and to try to understand how things work.  Encouraging kids in this is very important, and it’s important to make it fun.”

Those sentiments were echoed by a National Instrument executive on the panel.

“We are very passionate about this issue,” said John Pasquarette, director of software marketing for Austin, Texas-based National Instruments. “Texas ranks number two in the country in terms of high tech jobs and exports,” he said. But it’s a myth that a high school diploma gets students ready for college, and the past decade of reform in public education has done little to improve things, he added.

To help, NI participates in a number of initiatives. One such effort is the Texas Engineering and Technology Consortium. Another is the partnership with Tufts University and Lego to create RoboLab, a system that allows grade school and high school students to build and program their own robots.

NI has also dedicated the time of its own engineers.

“We have over 200 volunteers who spend 1 to 2 hours a week in the classroom, and 20 percent of our engineering staff is involved in programs like this,” Pasquarette said.

“It comes down to getting kids excited so they can have fun with this technology.”

Pasquarette also noted that at IBM, a company with significant resources for such programs, engineers are encouraged to take up teaching as a second career as they near retirement age.

Encouraging children to become engineers requires role models, according to Pasquarette.  In fact, many people who have engineering degrees end up pursuing entirely different careers.  Pasquarette pointed out that more Fortune 500 CEOs have engineering degrees than have business degrees.

“Once you have that degree that has more value than any other kind of degree,” he said.

To George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, President George Bush’s State of the Union address this year went a long way towards addressing many of the issues semiconductor companies face today.

While Scalise only briefly mentioned measures to improve kindergarten through 12th grade education in the United States, he did list the Bush administration’s efforts to allow U.S. educated knowledge workers receive an exemption from the H1-B visa cap, efforts to grant visa extensions to foreign students and to accelerate the Green Card process, and plans to double funding for physical science over the next 10 years.

“We are at least on the right track,” he said.  Scalise said many of these measures are making their way through the legislative branch. 

Scalise also pointed to efforts to recruit math and science teachers, and the creation of scholarship programs for undergraduates in engineering.

“We don’t need any more studies,” he said. “The issue is to make sure we do something about this now.” 

Scalise added that SIA-member companies have invested a great deal of money in improving kindergarten to 12th grade education in the United States and that they need to continue to provide that kind of support.

“Unless we get on that today we are not going to reach enough of these young people,” he said.

The SIA had considered doing a nationwide advertising campaign to create a groundswell of support for encouraging children to pursue engineering careers – something of a Sputnik 2 – according to Scalise.

However, such a campaign would be very costly and would offer no guarantee of success. Instead the SIA has launched a major campaign to target major congressional districts.

“We think this focus will do major things to get us on the right track,” Scalise said.