Mechanical Engineering Education Leadership Summit to Focus on the Digital Mechanical Engineer

For the past 30 years, the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Education (MEED) Leadership Summit has brought together mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering technology educators with representatives from industry, government and professional societies to focus on issues that will have an impact on the future of engineering education and discuss potential strategies to deal with them. This year’s summit, MEED 2019, will be held from March 20 to 23 at the Renaissance New Orleans Pere Marquette in New Orleans, LA.

MEED 2019, which will address the theme “The Digital Mechanical Engineer: Engage, Explore, Empower,” will be co-chaired for the first time by mechanical engineering department heads from historically black universities and colleges: Nadir Yilmaz of Howard University and H. Dwayne Jerro of Southern University. Members of the conference’s organizing committee include Oscar Barton, chair of the ASME Committee on Engineering Education and mechanical engineering department head at George Mason University; William Predebon, past chair of the Committee on Engineering Education and chair of the department of mechanical engineering and engineering mechanics at Michigan Technological University; Aisha Lawrey, director of Engineering Education at ASME; and Ashley Huderson, manager of Engineering Education at ASME.

Following an ABET orientation session and an ASME/ABET pre-conference workshop on March 20 and 21, the Summit will kick off the afternoon of March 21 with an opening luncheon and a keynote presentation featuring Pamela Norris, executive associate dean for research at the University of Virginia and chair of the ASEE Engineering Research Council. The first of the Summit’s plenary sessions, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., will then discuss how industry and department heads and chairs can engage mechanical engineering departments to ensure that their students possess the aptitude and skills in computer programming, coding and artificial intelligence they will need to succeed in the profession. Panelists participating in the discussion, which will be moderated by Lee Redden CTO/Co-founder of Blue River Technology, will include a representative from the US Department of Defense (DoD) and Marcelino Gomes, executive manager of pipeline protection for Petrobras Transporte.

A second plenary session, to take place on March 22 from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., will take a look at the current best practices and innovative approaches in the use of digital tools in mechanical engineering. During the session, speakers including Steven Goldsmith, mechanical engineering professor at Michigan Technological University, and Patrick A. Hillberg of Siemens Academic and Workforce Business Development will discuss the opportunities and challenges in their respective sectors. A question-and-answer discussion session will follow the presentations.

That afternoon, a third plenary will take a look at the various digital tools with which mechanical engineers are now expected proficient and the effect they will continue to have on mechanical engineering education. Moderated by Marcio de Queiroz, professor and director of the iCORE Lab at Louisiana State University, the plenary panel will feature Fab Clayton, education engagement program manager at Autodesk; Mario Rotea, mechanical engineering department head at the University of Texas-Dallas; William Messner, professor of mechanical engineering at Tufts University; and Darrell Robinette, faculty advisor for the SAE/GM AutoDrive Challenge Team at Michigan Tech.

The conference will also feature several half-hour briefings by speakers such as Iana Aranda, ASME director of programs, Engineering for Global Development; Michael Johnson, associate professor and associate department head at Texas A&M University; Jenna Carpenter, dean of Campbell University; and Joe Sussman, chief accreditation officer and chief information officer at ABET.

MEED 2019 will conclude on March 23 with an Engineering Education Town Hall from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., a conference wrap-up and closing session from 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., and the ASME Committee on Engineering Education Meeting from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

For more information on the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Education Leadership Summit, or to register, visit https://event.asme.org/MEED.