Culture of Engineering Without Boundaries by Gurmeet Bambrah

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In a 2008 study James J. Duderstadt has pulled together findings and recommendations of various reports that have been emerging since the 1990s concerning the profession of engineering, technology, innovation and the role played by human and intellectual capital, in changing the nature of engineering practice, research, and education. By drawing heavily from recent studies and informed by the wisdom of several expert panels, the author has concluded that engineering practice in a rapidly and technologically changing world will require an ever-expanding knowledge base shifting the paradigm for engineering research to better link scientific discovery to innovation. Engineers he suggests will need to acquire a much higher level of education, particularly in professional skills such as innovation, entrepreneurship, and global engineering practice. He argues that possession of relevant knowledge, creation of new knowledge, and the capacity to apply this knowledge are now key determinants of the strength of a nation.

Globally, privatization has been releasing telephone, utility and other nationalized companies from state control. Digital technologies such as the internet, audio, video and text-based communications are now available to individual users through their personal computers and hand-held mobile devices. Time and space once stopped replication of monumental structures and the movement of people and knowledge. Monumental integration of spatial and time scales using cyberspace technology within larger and larger systems of great complexity has now blurred spatial and temporal barriers giving rise to Engineering without boundaries. Neither mobility nor accreditation – engineering cultures of a world divided by time and space can withstand the impact of these developments. Consequently globalization and internationalization of engineering – education and practice – are now hot topics in relation to the evolution of this profession.

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The Culture of Brain Circulation by Gurmeet Bambrah

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AnnaLee Saxenian suggests that global labor markets are being transformed through the changing costs of transportation at the same time as digital technologies make long distance exchange of large amounts of information possible in real-time. International migration – historically a one-way process – she states has become a reversible choice. Scientists and engineers from developing countries – once forced to choose between settling abroad and returning home to less attractive professional opportunities now contribute to their home economies while maintaining professional ties in more advanced economies. Some even become “transnational‟ maintaining residences and citizenship, in more than one nation. The same individuals who left their home countries for better lifestyles abroad in the last quarter of the 20th century are reversing brain drain by transforming it into “brain circulation‟ as they return to their home countries to establish business relationships or start new companies. They do this by maintaining their social and professional links to industrialized countries.

For example, in the early 1980s immigrants began to transfer the Silicon Valley model of early-stage high-risk investing to Taiwan and Israel. The returning immigrants brought capital, technical and operating experience, knowledge of new business models, and networks of contacts in the United States to these countries already having the cultural and linguistic know-how needed to operate profitably in these markets. Consequently Israel and Taiwan today boast the largest VC industries outside North America, and both have and support high rates of new firm formation and growth.

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Twenty First Century Engineering- The Mega and Nano Cultures by Gurmeet Bambrah

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Five years ago, according to Charles M. Vest18 President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology there were two frontiers of engineering, each of which had to do with scale and each of which was associated with increasing complexity. One frontier had to do with larger and larger systems of great complexity and, generally, of great importance to society. This was the world of energy, environment, food, manufacturing, product development, logistics, and communications. This frontier was addressing some of the most daunting challenges facing humanity. Consequently many today believe in the need to develop and place mega-systems engineering at the center of engineering education in the decades ahead.

The other frontier had to do with smaller and smaller spatial scales and faster and faster time scales, the world of so-called bio/nano/info. This was mainly due to the information revolution that resulted from the advent of the personal computer and internet ushering in a period of great change. This frontier melding physical, life, and information sciences, offers stunning, unexplored possibilities, and natural forces of this frontier compel students to work across traditional disciplinary boundaries. As Biologists and neuroscientists have discovered the immense complexity of even the simplest living systems, engineers are becoming indispensable to research in life sciences. The language in the life sciences today is about circuits, networks, and pathways while engineers investigate advanced molecular self-assembly.Out of this world will come products and processes that will drive a new round of entrepreneurship.

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Culture of Mutual Recognition by Gurmeet Bambrah

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As empires rapidly dissolved after 1960 many dominions and colonies had partly or completely adapted the institutional and academic engineering governance models of the colonizers. A large number of engineering associations resulted from this laying the foundation stones for an ‘unofficial Commonwealth’ of professional associations and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).16 Globally this meant that licensing and regulation of engineers became more prevalent as a means of maintaining engineering standards and protecting public safety, health and welfare.

Just as issues of national mobility of engineers across states had emerged in America at the turn of the twentieth century, issues of international recognition of qualifications started to become significant after 1960. Multi-lateral credential recognition agreements began to be put in place. These were meant to promote mobility of engineers across borders but were largely derived from the traditional model of core industrialized countries as leaders and developing countries as peripheral followers. These international agreements and discussions can now be divided into two components:

 Mutual Recognition and accreditation of Academic Qualification Agreements and;

 Mobility Forums concerned with assessing professional practice and registration of engineers

A myriad of national and international mutual recognition agreements have evolved since 1989. These include the Washington, Dublin and Sydney accords initiated by ABET, the APEC and ASEAN Registers of Asian Engineers and the FEANI and Bologna Accords to standardize engineering education across Europe. Since the mid nineties focus has shifted to mobility forums concerned with assessing professional practice and registration of engineers across borders.

Significantly different accreditation outcomes have resulted from these. ABET in America has extended accreditation to international levels. It accredits over 3,100 programs at more than 600 institutions in 22 Countries (as of September 2011). CEAB in Canada however has failed to internationalize and currently only accredits 220 engineering programs in 43 schools across Canada. Consequently Engineers migrating to America from other countries face few barriers to licensing or employment while only 1 in 6 of those migrating to Canada get to be licensed or employed as engineers in Canada. Mobility and accreditation now face new challenges.

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Canadian Engineering Culture

Canadian Society of Civil Engineers
Canadian Society of Civil Engineers

TalentHunt 360’s founder and CEO Gurmeet Bambrah, PhD write on Canadian Engineering Culture:

In Canada control of professional education was assigned to the provincial jurisdiction under the British North American Treaty. Like its American counterpart, the self-regulating Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE) did not endorse the external regulation of engineers. CSCE was however blocked from the regulatory function by its dominion-chartered status. By transforming itself into the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), it was able to encourage engineers in the provinces to set up self-regulating groups. Between 1920 and 1922, seven of the nine provinces in Canada established engineering associations13 that were incorporated under the Professional Engineers Act in 1922. This act allowed them to register engineers but stopped short of allowing them to license members. In 1937, the self-regulating associations successfully fought to amend the 1922 Professional Engineers Act. Under the amended Professional Engineers Act, licensing of their members by the associations became mandatory.13 Engineering associations thus wrested the function of regulating engineering from the Provincial Governments opening the door for them to control who could practice engineering in Canada. This hybrid self-governance model empowered engineering associations to protect self-interests of their members through licensing. A consistent theme in the quest of Canada‟s engineers to define their role therefore has been self-regulation and control over who can practice engineering in the provinces of Canada.

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American Culture of Engineering

American Institute of Electrical Engineers History Photo
American Institute of Electrical Engineers History Photo

TalentHunt 360’s founder and CEO Gurmeet Bambrah, PhD write on American Culture of Engineering:

Initially the United States combined the Military academy model with British hands-on training and self-regulation at the Military Academy at West Point in 1802. This remained the case until the 1860s. Civil engineering schools remained obsessed with balancing academic teaching and hands-on experience either independently from the universities or as colleges of engineering only loosely affiliated with universities.6 In a groundbreaking move in 1862, however through the Morrill Act, America initiated the crucial step of placing engineering education inside universities through land- grant colleges.

In a completely independent development, in early 1900s Wyoming, an American state required applicants wishing to gain access to state water to file a detailed technical application for this. It was in this context that licensing for the engineering profession was introduced to protect the public from inaccurate applications and to ensure accurate records on water abstractions. State registration became mandatory for those representing themselves to the public as engineers or land surveyors and the state board of examiners for the profession was created at the same time. So popular was this development that by 1950 all states across America had adopted the licensing tradition.

Alongside these developments engineering societies modeled on the British self-regulating model continued to grow and fragment by engineering discipline into civil, mechanical, electrical, and other forms of engineering. Examples of these included the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 1852), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, 1880) and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, 1884). However self-regulation by engineers never gained a stronghold in America.

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