AN ICON FOR THE MEs
By Satyandra K. Gupta

Over the last few months, I have met with several parents who are not engineers but want to send their children to engineering programs. Many of them have a very good idea about the jobs performed by civil, aerospace, biomedical, and computer engineers. However, none of them seems to know what modern mechanical engineers do.

Some of the parents feel that lack of “specialization” associated with mechanical engineering is a plus and hence it may give their children flexibility in the future. However, prospective engineering students are very passionate about some social cause or another. So they do not want to pick a major that will train them to be generalists. They want something highly specialized (e.g., solar energy, prosthetics, eldercare) that will match their passion.

I feel that non-engineers are beginning to view mechanical engineering as synonymous with miscellaneous engineering. That is, they see mechanical engineers playing supporting roles in a wide variety of emerging technology areas, but not leading in these fields. This image is reinforced by marketing material produced by many ME departments that show their students and faculty playing a supporting role in the development of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology, but not in a leadership role.

So we need to figure out how to present mechanical engineering to non-engineers. It appears that other engineering disciplines do a much better job in defining their disciplines for non-engineers with certain distinguishing icons. Buildings, bridges, and highways serve as icons of civil engineering. Rockets, airplanes, and helicopters serve as icons of aerospace engineering. Computers serve as icons for computer engineering. What should serve as an icon for mechanical engineering? Should we even care about defining icons for ME?

We should certainly continue to emphasize ME’s versatility as its strength. But I believe that only relying on versatility of mechanical engineering may not be enough in today’s world. To attract the best and the brightest students to the field, we must identify areas where we are clearly the leaders. To do this we should consider identifying and communicating icons of modern mechanical engineering.

I believe that these icons should be products and technologies that are clearly involved in solving pressing societal problems and, in the general public’s mind, are clearly being led by mechanical engineers. I would like to initiate a discussion around this topic and see if we can develop a consensus about how to best present mechanical engineering to non-engineers.

My personal suggestion regarding modern ME icons would be robots, hybrid cars, renewable energy generators, and assistive technology. Each of these represents solutions to important societal needs. Robots and assistive technology will enable us to take care of the increasing elderly population.

Hybrid cars and renewable energy generators such as solar cells, wind turbines, and fuel cells will help us reduce our the reliance on fossil fuels and combat climate change. Robots can also make space exploration much cheaper and safer. The ME community should stake its claim to these areas and establish them as the icons of modern mechanical engineering.

Once these icons are established, it will be relatively simple to justify why mechanical engineering fundamentals such as kinematics and dynamics, vibrations and controls, heat and mass transfer, solid and fluid mechanics, and product design and manufacturing are critical pieces of knowledge that are needed to confront some of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. 

Editor’s note: The author, an ASME Fellow, is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park. He is director of the Advanced Manufacturing Lab and a member of the faculty of the Institute for Systems Research, an interdisciplinary research unit in the university’s Clark School of Engineering.