Engineers in Popular Media: Hollywood As a Recruiting Tool for Engineering Colleges

Home , Howard Wolowitz, The Hawking Excitation

Andrew Fabian

4/17/12

Engineers in Popular Media: Hollywood as a Recruiting Tool for Engineering Colleges

Engineers are boring. Engineers are bad at communicating. Engineers are nerdy. Engineers cannot work on teams. These are just a few of the many stereotypes about engineers, but it does not stop there. There are also a large number of misconceptions about what engineers actually do.

Engineering is just applied math and physics. Engineering is building things. Engineering is coding. These stereotypes may be prevalent today but it has not always been so. As the field of engineering has developed and changed greatly throughout its history, so has the image of the typical engineer. While the term engineer first originated to describe the siege engineers in the roman army, the first person to really create the image of the engineer was Leonardo de Vinci. He represents a Renaissance man, someone who was accomplished in many more fields than engineering including painting, architecture, and science. What is important is that he was seen as an innovator and as someone who contributed to society. But as the industrial revolution hit full speed, the image of an innovator and inventor started to slowly be replaced by a highly intelligent specialist in a particular field.1 As technology grew more and more advanced, the public’s understanding of the technology continued to decrease. As their understanding decreased, so did their ability to relate with what engineers did and with this their image of engineers as innovators started to fade. It is likely that the engineering stereotypes, some of which are negative, began to form due to the public’s lack of understanding and lack of ability to relate to engineers about what they do.

1 Yurtseven, H. O. (Vol. 6, No. 1, 2002). How Does the Image of Engineering Affect Student Recruitment and Retention? A Perspective from the USA. Global Journal of Engineering Education, 17-23.

These stereotypes are a cause for much worry among the engineering community because they are strongly believed to be one of the main reasons for the lack students enrolling in college to obtain an engineering degree. The other main reasons are the lack of knowledge about the engineering profession and the belief that it is too hard or too much work. Not enough students enrolling is an issue because without enough engineers the United States will not be able maintain its advancing technological culture as well as have to export more and more engineering jobs. To this end, there has been a concerted effort to remake this image of engineering.2 The first step to fixing the problem is to identify the causes.

One way that these stereotypes are perpetuated is through movies and TV shows. While there may be many other reasons for the perpetuation of the stereotype, mainstream media such as movies and TV shows will be focused on in this paper. Mainstream media is chosen because it plays such a huge role in shaping the views of society and within it there is a clear lack of positively portrayed engineers. Really, there are just not that many engineers portrayed at all. As part of the effort to remake the image of engineers and engineering, there have been many calls for and a small amount of work done towards both increasing the presence of engineers in the media and improving their image. The question then is not just how large a role does Hollywood play in the success of engineering college recruitment within the United States, but can it also be turned into a more effective tool through the efforts of engineering organizations? The answer that is found through research and analysis in this paper is that currently mainstream media has little negative effect but also does little to inspire the next generation of engineers. At the same time, an increased presence and improved image of the engineer would be an effective tool for increasing the enrollment of students to engineering institutions. But at the rate things are going it is unlikely that a significant improvement will come quickly. Also, even when an improved

2 Roode, B. (2011, August). Screen Play: Can Engineering Score by Landing a Bigger Role in TV and Movies? Professional Engineering Magazine.

2 image is achieved, there will still be more problems to be solved to improve the matriculation of students to engineering colleges.

While engineering is one of the fastest evolving and highest paying fields, engineering companies still have trouble finding enough qualified engineers to hire.3 There is a clear correlation between the lack of qualified engineers and the lack of engineers graduating from undergraduate institutions within the United States. This is not due to the lack of engineering schools, but rather it is due to a combination of the lack of incoming students who want to be engineers and the high dropout rates among engineering students.4 When students are surveyed, there seem to be three main reasons for the low number of students studying engineering. The first reason is lack of knowledge about engineering. A survey done by the American Society for Engineering Education showed that 45% of the general public were not well informed about the engineering profession.5 In this case not well informed means a lack of knowledge of what professional engineers actually do on a day to day basis. Considering the large role that engineering plays in most people’s everyday lives this is a surprising statistic as one would expect people to take more of an interest in where the technology they use comes from. The problem is often that people see engineers as so highly specialized that what they do is too complicated to bother learning about.6 The issue that arises from this lack of knowledge is that students often choose to dropout or change majors when they realize that engineering is not what they expected it to be. From

2000-2010 the number of engineers enrolled in undergraduate institutions dropped an average of 20% between their 1st and 2nd years.7 The second reason for the lack of students graduating with engineering

3 Yurtseven (2002) 4 Gibbons (2010) 5 Yurtseven (2002) 6 Yurtseven(2002) 7 Gibbons, M. T. (2010). Engineering by the Numbers. American Society of Engineering Education.

3 degrees is that many students see it as too much work and not worth the effort.8 One underlying issue here may be that engineering education actually needs to be rethought, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. The third main reason, and the reason that will be looked at more in depth, is students’ lack of interest in becoming engineers. As mentioned earlier, engineering is one of the highest paying professions, yet there never seem to be enough qualified engineers graduating college to fill all the jobs. In 2001 in order to compensate for the constant shortage “the USA increased the ceiling of number of immigrant engineers and scientists from 60,000 a year to 120,000 a year.”9 As stated earlier, the revamping of engineering education, while of great importance to solving this issue, is beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore the public’s lack of knowledge and interest about the engineering profession and how colleges and engineering associations are fighting these issues will be looked at in more depth.

Before discussing the issues surrounding lack of interest about the engineering profession in more depth, it is worth looking at why the lack of enrollment of students in undergraduate institutions is actually an issue. In the words of Frey, this issue will not just have a negative impact on specific industries or a specific sector, but rather “The divergence between our nation’s need for engineering and availability of an adequate engineering workforce has been characterized by leaders in government, industry, and academia as a serious impending problem for the economy, environment, security, and health.”10 Without an adequate supply of engineers, the speed of advancement will slow. This technological advancement is necessary not only for maintaining the United States’ status as a leading member of the world economy but also for keeping up with the growing population. Improved

8 Li, Qing et al. (2008). Development of an Instrument to Measure Perpectives of Engineering Education among College Students. Journal of Engineering Eduacation. 47-56. 9 Yurtseven (2002) 10 Frey, Daniael (2006). Engaging Children in Engineering Design Through Popular Media. Journal of Mechanical Design. 513-515.

4 technology is needed to feed, produce enough clean water, and provide enough resources for the world’s growing population. This issue is far deeper then is being presented here, but it is clear that an adequate supply of qualified engineers is important for the United States as a nation.

There are two main groups which are working to increase student recruitment to engineering colleges: the colleges themselves and engineering associations such as Professional Engineers and the

American Society of Engineering Education. There have been many efforts by both groups to both increase the knowledge about the engineering profession and increase interest in engineering in hopes that this will help to solve the recruiting problem that is currently facing engineering colleges and companies looking to hire engineers. For example, the University of Nevada Engineering Department purchased a Segway to show off at their engineering day.11 In 2006 Segways were a new and interesting technology and they hoped that seeing and riding one would help excite the prospective students about engineering. There have been many efforts similar to this one, but most of the engineering organizations push for change on a larger scale. Some of the main changes they push are to increase interest, eliminate negative stereotypes, and increase knowledge about engineering. One avenue for this is work towards increasing the number of engineers who appear on popular television shows and movies. This effort has only become popular and unified within the last 20 years but many see it as having great potential. With primetime shows such as CSI and Law and Order exposing the world to lawyers and

NYPD Blue showing what it is like to be a cop, many engineering associations believe that a similar show about engineers could have a very beneficial effect on college recruitment. Some engineering societies took this idea very seriously: The American Institute of Engineers looked into creating a TV show called

11 Vollstedt, A.-M. (2006). Addressing Low Enrollment in Engineering Schools Using the Segway HT as Recruitment Tool. 9th International Conference on Engineering Education, (pp. 14-18). San Juan, PR.

L.A. Engineer, a spinoff from L.A. Law, and The Sloan Foundation went as far as to give money to TV show writer to create a spinoff of NYPD Blue called NYPhd Blue.12

Before looking further into what engineering associations are doing and what specifically they are trying to change, it is important to take a closer look at the current state of engineering in popular TV shows and movies. The first thing to note is how few of the main characters in these TV shows and movies are actually engineers. Langford calls it a “small roster of films concerning engineers”13 while

Yurtseven talks about how there are very few movies or TV shows where the main character is an engineer.14 To put it in numbers, from 1994-1997 only 2% of prime time TV characters had a technical profession, only a small subset of whom were actually engineers.15 While many people can count on one hand the number of shows or movies about engineers that they have seen, Langford uncovers that there are “over 750 mainstream commercial films” in existence “where the law or lawyers are the dramatic personae”.16 Law is used as a counterexample to engineering’s lack of appearance on TV and in movies because it is one of the professions that is portrayed most often. The exposure that the Law profession gets on popular TV shows and in movies is sometimes seen as the standard to shoot for. A common theme among shows and films where engineering or feats of engineering play an important role is to have the engineers be nameless or passing characters or to not even show the engineers at all but rather just talk about them. It is believed that this is due to the fact that characters are better liked if they tackle situations that people can relate to and most people are not able to relate well with technical problems.17

12 Yurtseven (2002) 13 Langford, David. (2003) The Representation of the Professions in the Cinema: the Case of Construction Engineers and Lawyers. Construction Management and Economics. 799-806. 14 Yurtseven (2002) 15 Brindley, D. (1999, March). Hollywood Engineers. Prism Magazine. 16 Langford (2003) 17 Roode (2011)

While there are not that many main characters who are engineers, there are at least a few shows about engineering. Recently, in line with the void in the market for shows about engineering, there have been a number of less mainstream shows popping up. One example is the show Mythbusters, where a group of mechanical engineers tests urban and household myths through building and breaking things.

Another example is Extreme Engineering which is a show about large scale engineering projects. Both of these shows started in 2003 and are currently airing their 9th season. While these shows are great exposure for engineering, they lack two key components that would make them great recruiting tools for engineering colleges. The first is that neither of them focuses on engineers as people but rather are just about engineering. While engineering is exciting to people who are already interested in it, it takes characters that people can relate to and like to have a powerful effect on public opinion. The second component is viewership. While popular, primetime shows can expect to have around 15 million viewers per episode; Mythbusters reached its peak at 2.3 million viewers and averages about 1.5 million viewers per episode, with Extreme Engineering having less.18 With 10% or less of the viewership of a popular primetime show and a viewership comprised mostly of people who are already interested in engineering, these shows can be expected to do little to improve the image of engineers and thus improve the college recruiting situation.

While there are very few popular shows and movies about engineering and even fewer with an engineer as a main character, there are at least a couple. While many complain that the image of engineering is negatively portrayed in TV shows and Movies, there is really a large range and engineers are portrayed anywhere from nerdy to cool and boring to interesting. To further demonstrate this, a show will be picked from each side of the spectrum, negative and positive, to further investigate.

18"Mythbusters" by Discovery Channel. (2012). Retrieved April 5th, 2012, from Find the Best Reality TV shows: http://reality-tv.findthebest.com/l/90/MythBusters

Specifically, the TV show The Big Bang Theory and the movie Ironman will be discussed in more detail as both are very popular shows which prominently display engineering and have engineers as main characters.

The Big Bang Theory is a sitcom, airing its 5th season during the 2011-2012 season, about a group of four friends in their late twenties/early thirties who all work at California Institute of Technology. Of the four friends, one is a theoretical physicist, one is an experimental physicist, one is a particle astrophysicist, and one is an aerospace engineer. The Big Bang Theory was chosen because not only is one of its main characters an engineer and the others work in related fields, but also because of its primetime status and large viewership. In the fall of 2011, The Big Bang Theory, aired on Monday nights on CBS, averaged 16.5 million viewers per episode and ranked as the 9th most watched show on television and the most watched comedy.19 With this many viewers from a variety of professions and age groups, this show has the potential to make a large impact on the image of engineers. Unfortunately for the people and organizations working to improve this image, The Big Bang Theory uses many negative stereotypes and an overall negative portrayal of all of the main characters, but especially the engineer, as the main material for its comedic appeal.

The aerospace engineer in The Big Bang Theory is named Howard Wolowitz. As a person, Wolowitz fits very well into the nerdy and socially awkward stereotype of an engineer. He lives at home with his mom because he enjoys being mothered, he dresses in vintage 1960’s clothing, he is very into comics and superheroes, and views himself as a ladies man even though he only embarrasses himself over and over again. Not only is each of these points portrayed throughout the show, they are forced upon the viewer over and over again as part of the comedic aspect of the show. For example, in the episode “The

19 Nielsen Television - TV Rating For Primetime 2011-2012. (2012, April). Retrieved April 10, 2012, from Zap 2 it: http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-season-ratings,0,1937498.htmlstory

Hawking Excitation,” the viewer sees Wolowitz’s belt buckle collection which consists of one hundred or so large belt buckles, some of which are as nerdy as a Nintendo controller or the superhero Flash.20

Another example is in “The Killer Robot Instability,” when one of Wolowitz’s closest friends is asked why

Wolowitz is depressed, he replies ““he’s depressed because he’s pathetic and creepy and he can’t get girls.”21 Also, even though Wolowitz finally became engaged in the season 4 episode “The Herb Garden

Germination” he and his fiancé still live at home with his mother.22 Overall, Wolowitz fits very well into a number of engineering stereotypes and does not seem like the type of person who would inspire a young viewer to want to be like him.

Beyond how negatively he is portrayed as a person, his profession and his job is not shown in the best light either. Wolowitz is an aerospace engineer who has a masters from MIT and works at The

California Institute of Technology. While the nature of his job is never explicitly stated, most of the projects he talks about are related to working with NASA. All of this makes it seem as if he must be a respected and intelligent engineer who is very competent and good at what he does. On the contrary, the show makes fun of both the projects he works on and in some cases his ability as an engineer. One extreme example of this is in “The Classified Materials Turbulence” where the episode starts off by celebrating the launch of a shuttle with Wolowitz’s latest project on it, a zero-gravity human-waste disposal system or a space toilet.23 As an aerospace engineer working on projects for NASA there are many cool and flashy projects that the writers could have chosen for Wolowitz’s, but instead they chose to have him work on a space toilet. To make things worse, his ability of engineer and his work is further joked about when it turns out there is a flaw with his design and his space toilet will fail and explode

20 “The Hawking Excitation.” The Big Bang Theory. Produced by Chuck Lorre. 5 April 2012. Television 21 “The Killer Robot Instability.” The Big Bang Theory. Produced by Chuck Lorre. 9 Jan. 2009. 22 “The Herb Garden Germination.” The Big Bang Theory. Produced by Chuck Lorre. 7 April 2011. Television 23 “The Classified Materials Turbulence.” The Big Bang Theory. Produced by Chuck Lorre. 4 May 2009. Television.

9 after ten flushes. Wolowitz and his friends spend the episode trying to find a solution to the problem but fail in the end. At the end of the episode a joke is made about a very smelly International Space Station.

In addition to working on laughable projects, Wolowitz and his profession are constantly being put down by his friends. In “The Killer Robot Instability,” when the group is in need of an engineer and Wolowitz is not around, one of the group states “engineering is merely the slow little brother of physics.”24 Another time, in “The Hawking Excitation,” after making fun of Wolowitz for not being as smart because he is an engineer, Wolowitz asks his friend to apologize. His friend apologizes with “You are obviously very good at what you do… it is just that what you do is not worth doing.”25 As the only engineer among the group,

Wolowitz and his profession are made fun of again and again.

While all of these points should be taken with a grain of salt because The Big Bang Theory is meant to be a comedy, the aspects of the show described point towards a continuation of the negative image of engineering and the engineer. The show uses stereotype after stereotype as its comedic fodder: Wolowitz is nerdy, Wolowitz likes comics and superheroes, Wolowitz is socially awkward, etc.

And in the process it proceeds to make fun of one of the most respected engineering jobs out there, working for NASA. Considering that “Television is cited as a source of science and technology information more than twice as often as newspapers, and more than ten times as often as either books or family and friends,”26 it can definitely be argued that television shows, especially such a popular show, has a significant effect on people’s views. It can then be concluded that the 9th most popular show on television, and by far the most popular show with an engineer in it, has a neutral to negative effect on society’s view of engineers as it perpetuates negative engineering stereotypes. And if it is agreed that this image of the engineer has an effect on students’ decision to enroll in engineering institutions, it is

24 “The Killer Robot Instability.” The Big Bang Theory. Produced by Chuck Lorre. 9 Jan. 2009. 25 “The Hawking Excitation.” The Big Bang Theory. Produced by Chuck Lorre. 5 April 2012. Television 26 Frey (2006)

10 clear why TV shows such as The Big Bang Theory are a concern for the undergraduate engineering recruitment process.

While TV shows are one very popular avenue for influencing popular culture, movies such as

Ironman can also play a large role. Ironman debuted as one of the premiere movies of 2008 with the 11th largest opening weekend ever and ended up grossing almost 600 million dollars worldwide.27 Ironman is adapted from a comic about the superhero Ironman. The movie is about a prominent CEO and engineer who is kidnapped and builds a robotic suit to help him escape and to fight evil. Beyond the large earnings, Ironman has been widely praised by both the public and movie critics. It retains a 91% approval rating from over 850,000 votes on rottentomatoes.com, one of the most respected movie review web sites.28 In addition, it has been ranked among the top 500 movies ever made according to a combined user and critic rankings on Empire.29 As one of the major motion pictures of the last decade,

Ironman has been watched by and influenced a very large number of people. Setting the average ticket price at $10, an estimated 60 million people viewed the film just in theaters. It has also been praised by many engineering associations as a prime example of how popular media can be used to positively influence the image of the engineer through the movies main character, Tony Stark.

Tony Stark is a genius engineer and CEO of Stark Industries, a major US weapons manufacturing company. Stark starts out as a likable but egotistic genius who seems to have everything going his way.

But his business partner, Obadiah Stone, is actually plotting his assassination so that he can take over the company and run it his way. Stark is kidnapped and forced to use his engineering skills to design and

27 Iron Man. (2012, April 12). Retrieved April 12, 2012, from Box Office Mojo: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ironman.htm 28 Iron Man (2008). (2012, April 12). Retrieved April 12, 2012, from Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_man/ 29 The 500 Greatest Movies of all Time. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2012, from Empire Online: http://www.empireonline.com/500/

11 build a device to help him escape from the group of terrorists holding him. Throughout the movie,

Stark’s character evolves to become more caring and compassionate even while keeping his egotistical side. Several more times he is forced to use his engineering skills to solve problems and save the day.30

While he is not perfect, Stark is likable and written in a way that he is far more relatable than the average engineer in a movie or a TV show. Empire ranked him as the 48th greatest movie character ever, demonstrating how well the public is able to relate to him.31 According to Roode, “Stark exhibits the dynamic and comprehensive thinking an engineer requires while exuding the charisma stereotypic movie and TV engineers lack.”32 In other words, he “is literally a rock star engineer.”33

There are many scenes in the movie where Stark is forced to use his engineering skills to save himself or others. For example, after he is kidnapped by a terrorist splinter cell and forced to build them one of the new missile systems designed by his company, he knows he has very little time before they will kill him, whether or not he builds them the missiles. He then uses his time to design and build a new power source and a mechanized suit of armor to help him escape, all the while disguising his efforts as trying to build the missiles for the terrorists. With the help of his new suit and the aid of a fellow captor he builds an emotional connection with, Stark is able to just barely escape his captors. What is important is the fact that Stark used a combination of his technical skills and a personal relationship to escape, rather than fitting into the asocial stereotype of an engineer. This helps the viewers identify with

Stark, as it is argued over and over again that “the majority of viewers identify more closely with the human conflicts that arise in movie exploits” rather than “just technical problems.”34 Throughout the rest of the film, Stark redesigns, builds, and tests his suit in his advanced and well equipped home lab.

30 Favreau, J. (Director). (2008). Iron Man [Motion Picture]. 31 The 100 Greatest Movie Characters. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2012, from Empire Online: http://www.empireonline.com/100-greatest-movie-characters/default.asp?c=48 32 Roode (2011) 33 Roode (2011) 34 Roode (2011)

While some aspects of his work and lab and the amount of knowledge he has seem unrealistic, there are many realistic components that are shown. One important aspect of engineering that is shown is the cycle of testing, failure, and redesign. While designing his new suit, Stark goes through a number of tests of the different components, most of which end in some sort of failure that result in a redesign. When he first tests his hand thruster as a weapon, he finds there is too much recoil and must redesign it. When he first flies his suit, he finds that there is an icing problem at high altitudes and he must make the suit out of a different material. While his suit may be a little too futuristic to be believable, Stark’s cycle of testing, failure, and redesign is a very important aspect of engineering that is as well portrayed in a film as can be hoped for. Even though most of the failures are included for comedic purposes, they are probably the most realistic portrayal of engineering in the film.35 One last point about the way engineering is portrayed in the film is how pretty and well-designed all of the machines and his suit are.

While this may have just been done for effect, this may be what it takes catch the eye of non-engineers and to help them see engineering as a flashier profession.

As stated before, Tony Stark is much more than just an incredible engineer; he is also a real person that goes through a full character arc in the movie. In addition to being saved in the beginning of the movie by a fellow captor, he also has a number of other emotional developments that the viewer can relate to. He starts the movie as a confident CEO of a weapons manufacturing company who believes that he is doing the world a service by designing and manufacturing state of the art weapons.

Throughout the movie, he learns that selling weapons is not as black and white as he believes and he sets out to try to better his company. Another important way that Stark grows throughout the movie is that he starts out as a loner party-boy who cares only about himself. But throughout the movie he slowly falls in love with his assistant and a deeper side to him is shown as he fights not only to save

35 Iron Man (2008)

13 himself but also her.36 It is this type of character development that sets Tony Stark apart from other engineers in TV and film. It is why he is believed to be the gold standard of the portrayal of engineers in

TV and movies. While Wolowitz, from The Big Bang Theory, works on some cool projects for NASA, he will never have close to as positive as an impact as Stark because he will always lack relatability that makes the viewer connect with Stark.

With movies or TV shows like Iron Man few and far between and shows that even have an engineer main character like The Big Bang Theory almost as rare, many engineering associations and admissions departments at engineering universities around the country have been working hard to improve the image of engineering in the media. Many people and associations believe that “popular media should play a major role in the solution to the problem” of a lack of students enrolling in engineering institutions.37 With this in mind, the efforts of organizations to improve the image of engineering are twofold. The first is to find the formula for the ideal show about both personal issues and engineering such that the public can both relate and learn about engineering. The second is to actually get more TV shows and movies about engineers produced.

In the work to find the formula for the ideal show about engineers, two attempts have been investigated. The first method is to use film theory and a study of plots of successful movies about other professions to find a standard engineering plot that is comparable. Specifically, plots of movies about the law profession are studied as this is one of the most successful profession specific plots in film.38

The plot that is identified and relates specifically to a construction engineer is:

(1) Engineer has a noble plan;

36 Iron Man (2008) 37 Frey (2006) 38 Langford (2003)

(2) Forces of capital/competition/less noble motives force modification of original plan;

(3) Engineer marginalized in some way;

(4) Engineer senses/calculates danger;

(5) Unable to convince authorities;

(6) Disaster ensues;

(7) Engineer redeems his earlier weakness through heroic action saving/minimizing loss of life.39

While this seems to be an acceptable plot line for a movie about engineering, it is possible that developing a standard plot based purely on study of existing films is not the best method because it is very difficult to predict how well a film will do until after it is complete even with a tried and true structure. This is because a good movie does well not only because it has a good plot, but also because it has real and interesting characters. In addition, though this structure was developed nine years ago, no major motion pictures have followed it demonstrating that it takes more than sitting around and thinking to make change happen. The second method is a more user-oriented method that involves a significant amount of viewer feedback. It is also more aimed at solving the problem of college recruitment. Frey describes a show designed specifically to educate and intrigue middle school children about the field of engineering. The show will cast slightly older children, relying on them to act as role models, to compete in engineering problems.40 The important aspects of this attempt to create a new show to help fix the engineering recruitment problem are that it is focused and designed with the help of the intended audience. The producers of the show made significant efforts to have potential viewers see the show and provide feedback, making the development process very iterative.41 This show, titled

Design Squad, aired on PBS for three seasons, though it suffered from the same problems as programs

39 Langford (2003) 40 Frey (2006) 41 Frey (2006)

15 like Mythbusters with a very small viewership relative to shows like The Big Bang Theory.42 While it cannot be known for sure how powerful a tool this show was for engineering recruitment, it can be expected that the user feedback and iterative process made it more likely to be relatable to its viewers.

Extrapolating this method to a primetime show could be extremely beneficial.

The efforts of a number of other engineering organizations have been focused on simply increasing the number of engineers in TV shows and movies. One way this is put into action is through working with successful TV writers to write shows about engineers. The American Institute of Engineers paid a writer to put together a script for a show titled L.A. Engineer, modeled after the successful TV series L.A. Law. But after shopping around the script in Hollywood for four years, they are not sure the script ever even got looked at.43 The Sloan Foundation took it even further and gave a grant to the writer of NYPD Blue, a successful show about law enforcement officers, to create a show called NYPHD Blue.

This grant was part of the two million dollars set aside by the Sloan Foundation to “encourage positive images of scientists in popular cultures.”44 Unfortunately, this show was also never produced. The only comment that can then be made of this method is that it seems it will take more than just money to convince popular writers and Hollywood producers to produce shows about engineers. With this in mind, The Science and Entertainment Exchange (The Exchange), a nonprofit group created by the

National Academy of Sciences, decided to take a different approach. The Exchange works to connect writers and producers to scientists and engineers.45 The stated purpose of the exchange is to help make

TV shows and movies more realistic, but there is also another goal. It is believed that by meeting and interacting with more scientists and engineers, Hollywood writers and producers will see them more as

42 Design Squad Nation. (2011). Retrieved April 16, 2012, from PBS Kids: http://pbskids.org/designsquad/ 43 Brindley (1999) 44 Brindley (1999) 45 About the Program. (2012). Retrieved April 15, 2012, from The Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/about

16 people and less as “robotic number crunches.”46 The leaders of The Exchange do not believe that a major change will come over night and a “full blown one hour drama solely about an engineer will be produced,” but rather they believe that “forming an organic connection” between the writers and producers and the scientists and engineers “is where the change begins.”47 While no major benefits are expected soon, The Exchange has seen a number of minor victories. From 2009 to 2011, scientists and engineers working through The Exchange assisted on more than 300 TV and film projects. In one case, after touring a lab to gain inspiration for the lab in their show, the writers of the science fiction show

Eureka named one of the engineers on their show and gave them a couple humanizing touches, such as pink hair.48 While a minor victory, this engineer will now be seen slightly more as a person and a part of the show and less of a necessary piece to fill up the lab with workers. It is the little improvements such as this that will make a difference in the long run.

While there are many efforts working towards increasing the number of engineers in popular TV shows and movies, the correct method can only be identified if the specific desired outcome is known.

The two main goals of many of these organizations are to increase the number of engineers in popular

TV shows and movies and to improve the image of engineering in popular media. Though the organizations claim to be working towards both of these goals, a closer examination of their methods reveals that some are working harder towards one of them while others are working harder towards the other one. It appears as if a number of organizations are focusing their efforts on getting more engineers into the media and hoping that the improved image will follow. Organizations like the

American Institute of Engineers and the Sloan Foundation are throwing money at famous writers hoping

46 Yurtseven (2002) 47 Roode (2011) 48 Roode (2011)

17 that they will write successful and positive shows about engineers.49 The problem that a number of people are worried about is that increased visibility in the media without a focus on improving the image may not be as helpful as believed and could possibly even have a negative effect on college recruitment.50 Hollywood writers have creative license over their shows and in the end, what they write is really determined by the ratings. With a proven model like The Big Bang Theory out there which makes fun of engineering stereotypes, it is very possible that many shows about engineers, even those that start out with good intentions, will fall into the same model in pursuit of better ratings. In one case,

Hyperion Bay, a show about a software engineer living in Silicon Valley, premiered in 2000 to very poor ratings. The show was pulled after just a few weeks to be later brought back with the addition of an attractive actress from the show Baywatch.51 Though the show still ended up failing, this just shows what writers are willing to do to try to keep show’s ratings up. For this reason, it is very possible that all of the work of these organizations will just end up giving us five characters like Howard Wolowitz, rather than just one.

On the other hand, organizations like The Exchange are taking a very different and slower approach. Rather than looking for an instant solution and using money to influence, they are trying to slowly and organically influence the people who have the final say over the image of engineers in movies and TV shows. While this method has a number of downfalls centered around its long lead time, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. The most important benefit is that by meeting and getting to know real engineers, writers’ portrayals of both engineers and engineering will become more and more realistic. While it is possible that realistic is not as good of image as was hoped for, it is possibly a best case solution. Looking back to the main reasons that not enough engineers graduate from college, the

49 Brindley (1999) 50 Roode (2011) 51 Yurtseven (2002)

20% dropout rate between the first and second years is one that can definitely be pointed to as one of the main culprits. One main cause that this is attributed to is engineering not turning out to be what the students expected. With a general lack of knowledge about what engineering actually is and the popular and influential movies such as Iron Man giving students an unrealistic expectation of what engineers actually do, a realistic image of engineers and engineering could do wonders to fix the lack of enrollment in and graduates from undergraduate engineering institutions. Realistic portrayals of engineers and engineering would not only increase the public’s knowledge about engineering, but it would also be a vast improvement over the current negative stereotypes that currently appear in TV shows and movies.

The current pace at which programs like The Exchange are working at and the lack of major successes of other attempts to find a show that sticks leads to the expectation that there will not be any major changes within the next couple of years to how often engineers are portrayed in popular television shows and movies. What one can hope for is a slow, but constant, improvement to the image of engineers and them becoming more and more humanized. With this will come an increased exposure and an improved image.

While an improved image of engineers and an increased exposure on popular TV shows and movies will most likely lead to some positive effects on engineering college enrollment, it cannot be expected to carry the entire burden. The first problem arises from the slow pace at which institutions like Hollywood change. Serious efforts to improve the image of engineers in the media began in 1995 and only a small amount of progress has been made.52 While there may be a few more movies and shows like Iron Man as a result of these efforts, there are still shows like The Big Bang Theory. And there really are not that many of either of those types of shows. Even with the better directed and more focused efforts of today, one cannot realistically expect a significant step forward within less than the

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19 next decade, or by the year 2020. The second problem is that a negative portrayal of engineers in the media is not the only reason for lack of enrollment in engineering institutions. An increased exposure to and an improved cultural image of engineering may increase students’ interest, but it does not get around the problems in the education system or potential students being turned off by the difficulty and large amounts of work. Therefore, even if an ideal portrayal of engineers in the media, possibly even on par with the lawyers, was achieved, not all of the problems around recruiting more engineering students would be solved.

In conclusion, it seems that while the current state of engineers in the media leaves much to be desired, efforts of organizations like The Science and Entertainment Exchange have the most potential to positively influence the image of engineers in the media and in turn aid in the solving of the college recruitment problem. Other efforts such as those to develop a show like Design Squad also have potential, though on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, lack of action or undirected action such as the efforts taken by The Sloan Foundation and The American Institute of Engineers have just as much potential to have a positive effect as to have a neutral or negative effect. Therefore, it seems as if humanizing engineers to producers and writers of TV shows and Movies is the direction to take.

Unfortunately, while the least risky, this effort will take a long time to yield significant results. This long lead time in combination with the fact that there is more to fix than just the image of the engineer in the media makes it necessary to pursue more avenues than just this if the college recruitment problem is hoped to be solved in a reasonable amount of time. Every year, the gap between the number of qualified engineers in the United States and the number of engineers needed grows. As this gap grows, other solutions are sought such as allowing more engineers to immigrate or exporting the skilled positions. With this in mind, it seems that the engineering organizations that are working to fix the

20 image of engineers in the media are working in the right direction, but there is much more to do before the engineering college recruitment problem is solved.