Crisis situation: We need more engineers

It would be very easy to talk about the global recession, everyone does, but National Instruments’ co-founder Jeff Kodosky wanted to talk today about a different crisis during his keynote: The shortage of engineers and scientists.
“We are not producing enough engineers and scientists,” said Kodosky, the father of National Instruments’ flagship product line LabVIEW during his keynote address at NIWeek09 Worldwide Graphical System Design Conference in Austin, Texas. “We need to change that. The only people that create wealth are engineers and scientists. We are in a (engineering and scientist) crisis situation and we have been in it for a long time. Students need to be energized for science and math; they need inspiration.”
In short, Kodosky said we have to bring back the concept that engineering is a high profile career that has real growth potential. The country needs to change priorities from the elementary level all the way up to the colleges and universities, he said.
On the university level, the engineering curriculum needs to change, he said. The schools need to get in the real world where they need to teach how to program parallel systems.
Yes, engineers need to learn the basics, but there are just too many traditional aspects to teaching engineering at the university level that just do not apply any more.
“Our universities not only need to teach the traditional tools, but they also need to teach real-life tools.
Kodosky talked to the audience about getting involved and all engineers should not rest on their laurels, but rather go out and make a difference. He suggested:
• You can help mentor, teach and counsel a pipeline of students.
• Be politically active and stand up for science education
• Show how productive you can be by using the proper tools.
“In short, just do more,” Kodosky said.
Talking about growing the potential for future engineers and scientists, Kodosky also discussed technology and how that will help lead the world out of the massive recession, but he did not go into blame anyone or anything, but rather what needs to happen for the future.
“We live in a technological era,” he said. “We have cars with anti-lock brakes. We can view our location with Google Earth.” But on the other hand we have an “electric power system where energy is distributed over an antiquated grid and prone to black outs.”
“Without technology, we could not support a planet of 6 billion people and growing.”
He said the U.S., and the world for that matter, needs to keep growing in terms of technology; not remaining content with what we have.
“We are on a technology treadmill and we can’t get off and the treadmill is speeding up.”
-- Gregory Hale