by Avram Bar-Cohen
Three years have passed since an article called “Mechanical Engineering — The Ever-Evolving Profession” was published by Mechanical Engineering Online. As predicted, the mechanical engineering profession has indeed evolved since the article was published in August 2005. The marketplace, the profession, and the public at large have affirmed the critical role to be played by mechanical engineers in the 21st century.
In 2006, for instance, ME undergraduates supplanted electrical and computer engineering as the single largest group of engineering students in the United States. Mechanical engineering enrollment has increased by 25 percent since 1999, and in 2006 totaled approximately 80,288, 7 percent more than the electrical and computer engineering student population—the next largest group (Michael Gibbons, Databytes, Prism Magazine, January 2008). More than 16,000 ME undergraduate degrees were awarded in 2006.
In the annual U.S. News & World Report issue devoted to graduate engineering education, mechanical engineering was identified as the most popular engineering Ph.D. discipline and third among engineering master’s degrees. Moreover, the same issue quoted Edward Hensel, who heads the ME department at Rochester Institute of Technology, who said that “there’s a powerful pent-up demand in industry for mechanical engineers.” It also quoted Prof. Larry Silverberg, associate ME chair at North Carolina State University, who explained the relative abundance of research funding by noting that “… so many of the critical problems in the forefront now lie in the area of mechanical engineering.” (Thomas K. Grose, USN&WR, March 26, 2008).
Mechanical design and manufacturing, written off even by many MEs as hopelessly antiquated skill-sets, are playing a pivotal role in the development and commercialization of new products and systems in the U.S. Black & Decker’s powerful new family of cordless power tools was made possible by a Watertown, Mass., startup’s production ramp-up of novel lithium-ion batteries from a handful of units in late 2005 to millions per year in 2007. (Kevin Bullis, Technology Review, June 2008).
Mechanical gears—specifically, a hub-mounted epicyclic (planetary) gear system—underpin Pratt & Whitney’s recently introduced “game changing” Geared Turbo Fan jet engine, which dramatically reduces fuel consumption and noise. Low pressure-drop compact heat exchangers—yet another “classic” ME knowledge domain—are a key element in the high-efficiency Mercury 50 gas turbine manufactured by Solar Turbines. (Lee Langston, Mechanical Engineering, May 2008).
Against this background, the ASME-led Global Summit on the Future of Mechanical Engineering concluded that unique skills in system integration—across technologies and across time zones—will place mechanical engineers on the critical path for the development of a broad range of 21st-century products and systems (Harry Hutchinson, Mechanical Engineering, June 2008).
The recent sea-change in the perceptions of mechanical engineering validates and confirms our commitment to this profession. However, if the challenges posed by the reemergence of world-wide scarcity in energy, water, food, and shelter are to be met, along with the economic pressures confronting the U.S., the education of mechanical engineers and the structure of the ME profession in this country must be radically altered.
Nothing short of a concerted effort on the reprofessionalization of mechanical engineering, including transformative changes in engineering education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, in ASME’s interactions with the broader engineering community, and in the relationship between engineers and their employers will suffice.
Avram Bar-Cohen is Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland.
Coutesy: http://memagazine.asme.org/
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