Engineers finally in spotlight this week

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Engineers can finally come out of the dark shadows of Boelter
Hall and step into the light. It’s Engineers Week at UCLA,
and for one week out of the year, engineers are all the rage on
campus.

E-Week brings much-needed attention to a discipline that is
often misunderstood and under-appreciated. Throughout the week,
students will be introduced to the many different opportunities
they can get involved in, including building robots and mini race
cars to enter in competitions around the country.

The events should also serve to inspire more students to choose
a major in science and engineering. Fewer students are choosing
engineering as a major; American universities saw a 50 percent drop
in engineering degrees from 1988-1998, leaving the U.S. with a
relative dearth of talent and competitiveness compared with other
countries. Furthermore, the U.S. is embarrassingly outranked by
other countries in math and science ““ in a 1999 survey, U.S.
12th graders ranked 19th in math and 16th in science out of 21
industrialized countries. Foreign countries are outpacing the U.S.
in a race to produce quality engineers, because American primary
schools are not providing the requisite academic preparation.

America can no longer rely on benefitting from a “Brain
Drain” of engineers into our country. Given the current
recession in America, many engineers who immigrated here are out of
jobs and moving back to their home countries to look for work. We
must inspire more students to choose engineering majors now if we
want to compete with these countries in the future.