Dean's Speech at Nationals

[Paul Copioli]

Here are my thoughts about Dean's speech and about what we (as mentors)are trying to do about outsourcing.

Let's just say it: Dean is not a good public speaker. If you talk to him individually you get a different view of him. I think I understood what he was trying (very poorly) to say about outsourcing. He has had many people come to him asking about outsourcing and how it will affect engineering jobs. His speech was in response to that. Other engineers at my work complain about it all the time. Things like, "did you know GM (or Ford/DCX/etc) is sending X amount of engineering jobs to China?" or "in 20 years we will not have any engineering jobs left in this Country." You know what I say to them?

"What are you doing about it?! I am mentoring a FIRST team and showing kids that engineering is cool. I (and MANY other engineers involved in FIRST) am taking unfocused kids and getting them interested in science and technology and some of them are becoming engineers." They look at me like I just insulted their mother. They just don't know what to say.

Dean did have some points regarding the numbers of engineers coming from other countries compared to our own and this is the fundamental problem we will have: not enough engineers to keep the technology edge.

Here is one quote from a Detroit News article from Thursday, March 6th 2003 (this article is posted outside my office): "U.S. technology, seen from an Indian point of view, seems overwhelmingly cool and speaks to our status as a nation." It goes on to say, "Many of our own kids find science and engineering difficult and aren't aware it's the source of our power." The article was about U.S. automakers getting engineers from India.

The above article pretty much sums up some of the reasons I am involved. Our students need to get excited about engineering and science in order to want to be an engineer (or scientist, etc.). Dean's speaking skills don't even get me excited about engineering and am already excited about it.