ASME’s Industry and Academic Leaders Meet to Shape the Future Digital Mechanical Engineer

New Orleans was the site of a recent joint meeting between the ASME Industry Advisory Board (IAB) and leaders of ASME’s Committee on Engineering Education (CEE) dedicated to getting strategic advice from industry on the skills needed by digital engineers.

More than 20 IAB members and 5 CEE members attended the March 20th meeting, which was held in conjunction with the International Mechanical Engineering Education Leadership Summit. IAB chair Tommy Gardner, chief technology officer of HP Federal, and ASME Executive Director/CEO Tom Costabile provided opening remarks and welcomed special guests from Infosys Limited, Advanced Silicon Group and Altair.

One of the primary goals of the meeting was to provide IAB members with an understanding of the ABET accreditation process and provide feedback on specific mechanical engineering (ME) program criteria related to student success measures and faculty preparation per ASME’s enterprise planning goal for this year. ASME is a founding member of ABET, and ASME’s Committee on Engineering Accreditation (CEA) performs a systemic review of the ME and mechanical engineering technology (MET) program criteria on a regular basis. The IAB was pleased to be able to participate in this effort during the joint meeting.

As part of the meeting background, IAB members were given an ABET accreditation overview, the current wording for ABET Criterion 3 — Student Outcomes and Criterion 5 — Curriculum, and a summary of ASME’s Vision 2030 (V2030) report. ASME’s V2030 offers recommendations on how mechanical engineers should be educated to meet the demands of their transforming profession, and is the blueprint of ASME’s engineering education work. Oscar Barton Jr., chair of ASME’s Committee on Engineering Education, set the stage by giving an overview of V2030 and discussed its impact on the ME program criteria. Barton and Aisha Lawrey, director of ASME Engineering Education, then split IAB members into small groups for a more robust discussion. The industry executives focused on the particular areas of the engineering curriculum that need to be updated to keep up with the rapid changes in software and technical tools being implemented. The industry executives encouraged more opportunities be made in the coursework that could bring in presentation and communication opportunities, an understanding of the life cycle management of products, and basic business management skills. There was also the suggestion that beyond a senior design project, smaller projects that build on such considerations should take place in a young engineer’s education.
Among the other feedback received was that engineers in industry should also be provided opportunities to give back to higher education as guest lecturers or be more easily able to provide hands-on opportunities for students to spend time in their workplaces to see firsthand the process of creating a new product or adapting current one. As for engineering faculty, some of them have never had the opportunity to work in industry and without such exposure may not be as up-to-date on current trends. Therefore, industry should work more with academia to gain this exposure for the faculty. All of the comments from the small groups were compiled into a summary document. CEA will now take the IAB comments, along with the other comments received during the rest of the Mechanical Engineering Education Leadership Summit, into consideration at their next meetings.

After the ABET discussion, attendees also heard from Kathleen Lobb, ASME’s new managing director for Philanthropy, who explained the new vision for the ASME Foundation. Following her were ASME Executive Director/CEO Tom Costabile and Christine Reilley, ASME business development director for Healthcare, leading the afternoon discussion related to intellectual property and patent searches. The meeting concluded with a dinner featuring Dr. Anthony Boccanfuso, the president of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership, who spoke about the overall need to strengthen university and industry partnerships.

For more information about ASME’s work with ABET criteria, please visit www.asme.org/asme-programs/students-and-faculty/engineering-education/accreditation-board-for-engineering-and-technology.

Additional information about the ASME Industry Advisory Board meeting can be found at: https://www.asme.org/asme-programs/public-affairs-programs/industry-advisory-board