Improving Engineering Status in Society - Essay Example

Engineering is a well-respected profession. For example, in Canada, it ranks as one of the public's most trusted professions.

Engineering has often been seen as a more or less dull, uninteresting field in popular culture, and has also been thought to be the domain of nerds. For example, the cartoon character Dilbert is an engineer.

Engineers are seen to be respected yet ridiculed for their intense beliefs and interests, which might owe their origin to the fact that they have a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of many things. Thus, engineers such as Governor John H. Sununu, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Nuclear Physicist Edward Teller, are often driven into politics to "fix things" for the public good.

While it appears as though Engineers still only need a bachelor's degree to obtain a lucrative position that receives respect from the public it is only through a lifetime of devotion to their field and the further advancement of their technical knowledge that they might arrive at such a destination.

The presentation on the same topic starts by introducing the following key issues:
- Origin of the profession.
- What makes an Engineer.
- The importance of an Engineer.
- The Engineer’s current plight.
- A Socially Integrative Model proposed for the Engineer’s betterment.

While the origin charts out as simply as possible, the journey of the engineer from days of stone tools to a variety of mechanisms and the mechanics that facilitate easy functioning, the category of “what makes an Engineer” shows us the ingredients that an engineer is made up and the factors that co-exist in his professional life to churn out ideas, designs, and actual solutions.

Moving onto the issue of the importance of an engineer, one can safely state that engineers have an effect upon the kind of world we thrive in out of all proportion to their numbers, making it important for all of us to understand how they choose and plan the changes they make, for these are the things that influence, strongly and directly, the way we live from day to day.

The Engineer’s current plight is then described in terms of structural, administrative, participative, and perceptional points. An Engineer’s level of functioning is compared to various other streams in terms of his contribution and declining numbers.