Engineering Tops List Of Hardest Jobs To Fill.
Forbes (6/4, Weiss) reports, "For the second year in a row, engineer is the hardest job to fill in America," according to the staffing firm Manpower. The reason, said Larry Jacobson, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers, is that "we have whole generations of people loving liberal arts, not going into science and math." Jacobson "anticipates a shortage of engineers into the foreseeable future" which he attributes, in part, to the fact that "the federal stimulus program is hastening the rebuilding of America's highways, bridges and tunnels, and the refitting of buildings to be more sustainable, which is making the demand for engineers soar. Also, the demand for new sustainable energy sources such as wind farms is increasing too. Meanwhile, the profession's most experienced workers are retiring in droves." Jacobson noted that "companies are looking to replace more than half of their engineers over the next eight years, because baby boomers are retiring," while the "75,000 engineers being trained annually" at US engineering schools "won't come close to making up the shortage."
Outreach
In January, students from Ms. Jannie Hamilton and Ms. Abigail McMillen's class at North Pontotoc High School spent an afternoon learning about structural engineering and more about civil engineering in general. Students toured CEE facilities and viewed demonstrations of how laboratory equipment worked and participated in hands on excercises in the labs. CEE students Jacob Forrester and Kylie Estes gave the tour and graduate students assisted with the lab demonstrations and experiments. According to Ms. Hamilton, "...many have expressed interest in going to college (maybe even MSU)." At the conclusion of the CEE tour and lab excercises, the students toured the Aerospace Engineering department.
