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The 2023 Engineering Change Lab – USA (ECL) Engineering Ideas Institute will examine the future of engineering through scenario thinking. Participants will develop several alternative futures that explore critical challenges facing society and then examine the role of the engineering community in these futures. Scenario thinking will help to build important strategic thinking skills.

• Learning to identify “signals of change” in the world that offer clues to the future.
• Recognizing future forces already in motion to take appropriate action today.
• Improving decision-making skills by creating “memories of the future.”
• Developing strategies to position engineering organizations and the engineering community to influence future events and to elevate our contributions to the inevitable challenges of the future.

Register for the 2023 Engineering Ideas Institute

 

Meet the Provocateurs

To increase knowledge, challenge assumptions, and stretch imaginations regarding the future, this year’s Institute programming will feature a set of provocateurs offering their perspectives on important signals of change and future forces…. Read More

To unlock its full potential and fulfill its obligation to serve society at the highest levels, the engineering community needs to answer the “call to service” and step into the public policy arena. In this arena, priorities and funding are set and critical courses of action charted to address many of the engineering challenges of the 21^st century. Engineering Change Lab – USA’s (ECL) virtual summit, Engineering & Public Policy Leadership, held on June 20, 2023, explored this imperative, outlined the wide variety of options for engagement, and highlighted the personal satisfaction and sense of purpose that can come with contributing to society through public policy.

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In dealing with the future … it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be one hundred percent right.”

Alvin Tofler, Future Shock, 1970

Artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, climate change and extreme weather events, advances in genetic and biological science, shifting global geopolitics, the new space race, the long tail of COVID, rising income inequality and poverty traps, escalating cybersecurity threats, and imperatives for social and environmental justice. How will the intersection and interaction of these forces, and more, play out in the future? How should the engineering community respond to fulfill its role as stewards of technology and nature on behalf of society? What can the engineering community do today to influence how the future might unfold?

The 2023 Engineering Change Lab – USA (ECL) Engineering Ideas Institute, to be held from September 25-27 at the Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder, CO, will examine how the engineering community can use scenario thinking to become more agile, flexible, and resilient in the face of an uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing world. Provocateurs, group dialogue and exercises, nature walks, and opportunities for personal reflection will be used to challenge assumptions and stretch imaginations as participants collectively create and use scenarios to explore the future of engineering.

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Mike McMeekin & Kyle Davy

Updated 5/12/23.

Updated 5/28/23.

To unlock its full potential and fulfill its obligation to serve society at the highest levels, the engineering community needs to step boldly into the public policy arena. It is in this arena where critical policies related to the engineering challenges of the 21^st century are established and where funding levels and priorities are set. The public policy arena is where problems are defined that the engineering community is then asked to solve. The technical knowledge and experience of the engineering community are critical to effective public policy. To have a greater impact in the public policy arena, we will need to move from a sense of disempowerment to empowerment; from believing that we only implement the policies and ideas of others to active engagement in defining the right problems in the right way. We will need to apply this empowerment in new ways, with great respect and empathy for the impacts of public policy and our work on people, on communities, and on the environment.

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Why is sustainability important to the transformation of engineering education? ECL-USA’s virtual summit, Scanning the Horizon of Engineering Education:  The Sustainability Imperative, held on March 14, 2023, explored this question. The multi-faceted answers to this question lie in the engineering community’s responsibility in protecting our planet, the massive impact of the work of engineering, engineering student values, employer needs and responsibilities, and the academic community’s role in preparing the next generation.

 Cindy Cooper, The Lemelson Foundation

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Scanning the Horizon of Engineering Education:  The Sustainability Imperative

 An ECL-USA Summit Sponsored by NCEES and Presented in Collaboration with ABET, Engineering for One Planet, and Olin College of Engineering

 A series of significant societal, technological, and environmental challenges are reshaping what it means to be an engineer in the 21^st Century. Engineering education is a primary crucible for this change, with the need to transform the curriculum, experience, and composition of the student body, faculty, and staff in higher education institutions.

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