Engineering Change Lab-USA (ECL-USA) is a catalyst for change within the engineering community, helping it reach its highest potential on behalf of society
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In June 2023, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, that barred colleges and universities from using race as a factor in admissions decisions. This decision represented a clear signal of change with respect to Diversity / Equity / Inclusion (DEI) programs in public and private organizations across the United States. Since that decision other signals of change confirming the pushback against DEI have emerged. These include actions by multiple state legislatures that ban DEI programs at state universities and legal challenges to corporate and non-profit DEI programs. This emerging trend, which was one of the focal points at our 2024 Engineering Change Lab – USA (ECL) Engineering Ideas Institute, brings significant implications for the engineering community workforce…. Read More

Mike McMeekin & Kyle Davy

In his new book, Wicked Problems, Guru Madhavan of the National Academy of Engineering tells the story of Ed Link, the inventor of the flight trainer for pilots which transformed the aviation industry in the early 20th century by addressing the educational, workforce, and cultural challenges that accompanied the rapid development of aviation technologies. Link’s technological expertise and systems approach addressed a significant challenge of his time. In the 21^st century, we face an even more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. The 2024 Engineering Change Lab – USA (ECL) Engineering Ideas Institute featured a deep dive into the role of the engineering community in this VUCA world. Madhavan posed a key question to the participants in the Institute, “What is the equivalent of a Link trainer for engineering in the 21^st century?”

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Mike McMeekin & Kyle Davy

The engineering community faces a grand challenge with respect to its current and future workforce. At a time when ever greater contributions are needed from the engineering community to address societal challenges such as deteriorating infrastructure, climate change, access to clean water, threats to the natural world, the need for better medicines, cybersecurity threats, and the need for more equitable communities, future forces are aligning that could, if not addressed, widen the gap between workforce supply and demand.

Engineering Change Lab – USA’s (ECL) virtual summit on June 18, 2024, explored the nature of this grand challenge in detail, looking at the forces impacting the future workforce supply, identifying key leverage points, and shining the light on innovative strategies being employed now to attract and retain students and workers in the engineering community. Key focus areas of the summit were the need to frame the purpose of engineering as improving the lives of people, emphasizing purpose-driven practice as a key factor in attraction and retention of our future workforce, the imperative of confronting an enrollment cliff facing higher education, and the need to enlarge the circle of our workforce to include those who have traditionally been excluded.

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