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Talking Points: March 2011

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Advocacy & Outreach

Congress passed the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act in December. First enacted in 2007, the act was drafted in response to Rising Above the Gathering Storm, the National Academies’ report on America’s lagging competitiveness in science and technology. The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act funds investments in science and engineering research and STEM education from kindergarten to the postdoctoral level. NSPE supported the reauthorization as a member of the STEM Education Coalition.

NSPE General Counsel Arthur Schwartz commented before the Chemical Safety Board on the role of professional engineers in offshore drilling safety. NSPE believes that PEs should supervise all engineering design, operations, and maintenance of offshore oil rigs. The Chemical Safety Board is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

This April, NSPE will cosponsor the Society of Women Engineers’ Diversity and Inclusion Fuels Innovation in STEM Capitol Hill Day, when leaders from engineering organizations will discuss STEM issues with members of Congress. NSPE also cosponsored last year’s event, when NSPE leaders met with Congressmen Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Jerry McNerney (D-CA), both of whom have worked as engineers.

Congress passed the Federal Buildings Personnel Training Act in December. The bill seeks to ensure that federal buildings’ design, construction, operation, and maintenance personnel have appropriate skills and training to meet energy-efficiency goals and address high-performance building needs. NSPE sent three joint letters to congressional leaders in support of the bill.

Strategies for Adoption of Changes to State Engineering Statutes has been prepared jointly by NSPE’s Licensure and Qualifications for Practice Committee and the Legislative and Government Affairs Committee to provide guidance to state societies and members involved in legislative initiatives to change state engineering laws. This general guidance has been prepared with the input of about 40 PEs, most of whom have been through the legislative process in their home state.

Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, NSPE President Michael Hardy, P.E., F.NSPE, and Executive Director Larry Jacobson released a statement recommending that engineers interested in helping should not self-deploy. Instead, they should e-mail [email protected] or contact the Center for International Disaster Information at http://dex.cidi.org . Licensure

NSPE is proud to have played a pivotal role in encouraging the initiation of a software engineering PE examination, and looks forward to working with the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) and other engineering societies as the exam is developed and offered. NSPE’s Professional Engineers in Industry played a significant part in this effort.

NSPE is considering the adoption of a new policy and associated position statements on industrial exemptions from engineering licensure requirements in the U.S. To date, NSPE committee members have researched and summarized the status of industrial exemptions in each jurisdiction, determined the history of NSPE’s policies and position statements on this issue, drafted and begun deliberation of new policies, and coordinated these activities with those of the Professional Engineers in Industry and an NCEES committee.

NSPE has long supported Neches’s initiative to increase engineering education requirements for licensure through the Model Law and Model Rules provisions effective as of 2020. This is a divisive issue in some engineering disciplines, and NSPE supports the thorough evaluation and development of reasonable alternatives to provide flexibility for engineers in all disciplines and areas of practice. NSPE looks forward to playing a significant role in the implementation of appropriate changes in education requirements on a state-by-state basis.

NSPE continues to support efforts to encourage and/or require licensure of engineering faculty of upper-level undergraduate design courses. In the last several years, both NSPE and NCEES separately have conducted committee evaluations and reports to conceive of new policies to facilitate faculty licensure. Proposals for change have not yet gained traction. NSPE continues to consider policies on this issue, perhaps within the existing licensure framework.

NSPE and its interest group, Professional Engineers in Higher Education, fully support NCEES’s efforts to encourage ABET and all university engineering programs to use FE exam results as an outcomes assessment tool. NSPE believes that state licensing boards, which receive FE exam results each year for each university program in their jurisdiction, can play a significant role in encouraging universities to use this information to improve their programs. State board members typically accompany ABET evaluation teams as observers. In that role, the board members can pose questions and encourage use of FE exam results for outcome assessment purposes. Education

NSPE is closely monitoring the issue of uniformity of continuing professional development requirements across jurisdictions. This issue is becoming more problematic as more states begin to require state approval of individual providers and/or programs. This kind of requirement does not work well for licensees in other regions of the country where individual state-approved content may not be available. Disparities among jurisdictions present the potential for creating significant barriers to interstate mobility for professional engineers.

NSPE offers the career guide Engineer Your Way to Success for free to members. The book tells readers what skills they need for a successful engineering career, and it shares personal advice from established engineers on what they look for in hiring and promoting. This new edition also offers information on how to use social networking to advance careers, as well as the importance of financial skills in the profession. Find it in the “Shop NSPE” section of www.nspe.org .

Last fall, the Board of Directors approved offering 15 free online PDHs to all NSPE members. Available at www.nspe.org/15forFree, these will be available year round.

In addition, NSPE’s spring seminars have provided new content on topics such as:  Energy Tax Benefits and How They Can Benefit Engineers;  Key Federal Contracting Laws That Everyone Must Know;  Project Scheduling and Schedule Compression;  Business Development: How to Succeed in the New Economy;  The Fundamentals of Finance and Accounting for Engineers; and  Our spring series on ethics issues.

On May 4–6, 2011, NSPE will host “Synergy,” the annual education and networking event for HR professionals and CFOs who work for engineering organizations. The event is sponsored by the Professional Engineers in Private Practice and will be held in Alexandria, Virginia.

There recently has been an increase in requests for starting student chapters. Examples include the University of California at Berkeley, University of Delaware, and Drexel University.

Honors & Awards

The Top 10 finalists for Federal Engineer of the Year were named, and Vincent Sobash, P.E., was announced as the winner during a banquet on February 24 at the National Press Club. Rear Admiral Christopher Mossey, P.E., commander of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command and chief of civil engineers, was the keynote speaker. Other distinguished guests included Lt. General Robert Van Antwerp, PE, Commanding General of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Victor Mendez, Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Video of the event can be viewed at www.youtube.com/NSPEVideo .

NSPE has proudly named 30 members to its 2011 Class of Fellows. An article on this year’s Fellows will appear in an upcoming issue of PE magazine. The entire list of NSPE Fellows can be found at http://www.nspe.org/AboutNSPE/fellowmembershipgradelist.html Communications

NSPE’s social networking efforts continue to expand and provide the Society with new channels for communicating its messages.

 Twitter (http://twitter.com/NSPE ): We have over 1,000 followers, with exceptional growth over the last year. NSPE’s Twitter feed was mentioned as one of the Top 100 Twitter feeds for engineering students, and ranks as the 14th most influential on “Wefollow.com” for the keyword “engineer.”

 Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/nspefanpage) : NSPE’s number of fans has grown to more than 1,300 from 284 in October 2009.

 YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NSPEVideo ): Twenty videos are now available and NSPE’s channel has been visited over 5,900 times since it began in July 2009. NSPE’s Job Update, a newsletter published every other week that highlights the latest engineering job openings, was launched last year. A new Twitter feed, specifically aimed at announcing jobs, was started this past August at http://twitter.com/NSPEngineerJobs . Both of these communication tools have resulted in greater traffic to the NSPE Job Board.

Volunteer Leadership

The Society continues to expand its online resources for volunteer leaders. All of the following can be accessed at www.nspe.org/toolbox (user name and password will be required):  Social Media Smarts seminar;  NSPE's Mentoring Guide for Small, Medium, and Large Firms;  Benefits of Licensure presentation;  The Qualifications-Based Selection Process: Under Attack;  Strategies For Member Retention and Attraction;  A current list of NSPE-related trademarks; and  Archived Webinars.

International Efforts

NSPE President-elect Christopher Stone, P.E., F.NSPE, was invited to attend a meeting at Switzerland’s embassy with Swiss Ambassador Manuel Sager and Swiss Parliamentarian Ruedi Noser to discuss the upcoming World Engineers’ Convention, to be held later this year in Geneva. The theme of the conference is “Engineers Power the World—Facing the Global Energy Challenge.” NSPE is a member of the AAES International Activities Committee, which serves as a U.S. representative to the World Federation of Engineering Organizations.

President-elect Stone also represented NSPE at the 2011 conference of the CLAIU in Rome on February 11–12. The CLAIU is a European Union consortium promoting the concept that the master’s of engineering should be the educational standard for engineers in Europe. The conference theme was “The Formation of the Professional Engineer, International Models,” and Stone’s paper and presentation was on the process for PE licensure in the United States. Other Notables

The Engineers Joint Contract Documents Committee, of which NSPE is a sponsoring organization, has released new versions of three of its standard infrastructure documents: subconsultant and geotechnical services agreements, as well as the construction series bond forms. As always, NSPE members receive a 50% discount.

NSPE’s Professional Engineers in Private Practice made available the results of their 2010 survey of professional liability insurance companies in the December 2010 issue of PE magazine, along with a directory of insurers.

A new program with Victor O. Schinnerer Co. Inc. / CNA offers a 5% insurance discount to qualifying firms if their professional staff is at least 50% members of NSPE.

The Young Engineer Quarterly is an electronic newsletter available to all student members and engineers under 35, specifically covering topics of interest to engineers in the early stages of their careers, such as what employers look for, what licensure can offer, and workplace trends. In addition to this, Young Engineer Advisory Committee Chair Austin Lin blogs on similar issues on the NSPE Web site: http://community.nspe.org .

Both the NSPE-founded Engineers Week and the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies are celebrating anniversaries this year. EWeek has been around for 60 years, while NICET is turning 50.