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. 1 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.