ࡱ > ; = : @ bjbjצצ (, p p p p 4 d f f f f f f $ R @ @ @ @ : d @ d : T , @5g p z F X 0 R w " w w | 0 " 1 d p p ϡȱ STEM Symposium April 22, 2009 Lunch Panel Response by: Rizwan Siddiqi Dr. Augustine has done a great job in presenting the facts and state of the affairs and I would like to congratulate him on a very thought provoking speech. Thank you Dr. Augustine for showing us the mirror! You have rightly said that this is a nanotechnology era and we cannot afford to have articles like dont study engineering As a private sector practicing engineer, I can tell you that E is the most important component in the acronym STEM as all other disciplines like Science, Technology and Math helps make a good engineer. Dr. Augustine mentions chicken or egg, I would say chicken and egg. I personally think that we are on a verge of needing both chicken and egg and I am sure you must have enjoyed your lunch with both present rather than one or the other! Basically education and the prosperity both complements each other, It is as simple as 2+2 that means with more chicken we can produce more eggs and vice versa, isnt it. However, it is up to us to maintain a balance between the two! I am serving on Governors P-20 STEM Taskforce and recently preparing recommendations for the taskforce we determined that ϡȱ has 40% shortage of civil and environmental engineers. It is interesting to note that for every engineering graduate in State of ϡȱ we have 1.56 jobs Does it not mean that the message is not getting out to our schools about the acute shortage of engineering workforce and that is the area we need to focus. This lack of communication between the industry and schools needs attention and we need to bridge this gap sooner than later. Exposure to real life engineering innovations and challenges can make a difference in the life of those undecided freshmen. We dont need to tell them Intel inside but need to show them what is Intel and how we make it and then you can see the difference yourself. State needs to look into initiatives like loan forgiveness and scholarship and internship opportunities for higher engineering students. Robust state funding is key to success of STEM ready workforce development. If we want to be successful, we need to overcome the perception of Ph.Ds becoming over qualified for marketplace. Salary disparities between engineers and lawyers, doctors and those wallstreet gurus must be addressed (we are paying for their innovations anyway!). Bottom line if we cannot compensate for what they deserve then we will lose them to other disciplines. Small engineering business owners can be rising stars and must be encouraged for innovations. Although they lack resources but we all know that US economy is thriving on these small players. I know permitting and regulations are very important in our lives to have a good living and world class buildings and bridges and structures, but as we all know that excess of anything is bad, excessive regulations forces us to leave out our innovative sense and just address agency comments to get the design approved. We need to think about rewarding innovations not punish them. Rewarding innovative behaviors can produce miracles and we have seen live examples in 90s with IT explosion. College cost need to be made affordable to encourage higher technical education Engineering teachers must get involved with practicing engineers as an interns or volunteers More practicing engineers and professionals should be brought into teaching to inspire students from real life challenges I strongly believe that the students should enter a school or a college to develop a career not to find a job only. Another area needs attention is women engineers I dont know what to do but we need to do something to bring them into engineering profession. May be somehow we need to try chicken and egg issue here.. My wife is a physician and I often tell her that if you make a mistake may be one patient will be affected, but if an engineer makes a mistake several dozen or hundreds of people can be affected, so who is important. I leave the answer to you. no competition here though. To sum up my thinking I would like tell you a story - someone asked a soldier what is moral soldier replied I do not know exactly what it means but do know that we keep it here! I am not sure if we are keeping STEM there or not Thanks for your patience to listen to an Engineering Soldier like me and welcome to the club! Thanks Dr. Augustine again for a job weldone. ! 8 : ; O P Q ! ; F X m n 8 @ ] ^ ~vv hig CJ aJ h8s hO 5CJ aJ h8s CJ aJ h1k h1k CJ aJ h8s h1k 5CJ aJ hO CJ aJ h1k CJ aJ h3 CJ aJ hk CJ aJ hi>U h3 5CJ aJ hi>U 5CJ aJ hi>U hk 5CJ aJ hR$ 5CJ aJ hi>U hR$ 5CJ aJ . " # P Q m n J K } ~ ^gdv h^hgdv ^ gdv &