The Engineering Profession

What is Engineering?

In the United States, engineering is the second largest profession, with over 1.2 million engineers nationwide. It is at once the most obvious of professions and the most obscure. We are surrounded by engineered solutions, both simple and complex: consider the paper clip, the plastic bag, and the zipper. Consider your credit card, your CD player, and your car. Our society, our way of life, and our future are all heavily dependent on engineering. Yet most people will admit knowing little or nothing about engineers, what they actually do, and how they do it. For this reason engineering has been called the "invisible" or "stealth" profession. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, firemen, and biologists are all regularly in the news. They are often depicted in novels, movies and on television. But where are the engineers? Quick: name three famous engineers. Harder still: name one famous engineer still living. Hardest of all: name a fictional engineer.

Indeed--what is engineering? The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) provides a good definition: "Engineering is the art of applying scientific and mathematical principles, experience, judgment, and common sense to make things that benefit people." In short, engineering is the art of technical problem-solving and engineers are trained to solve problems of a technical nature. Their realm of expertise is technology--the ever-growing collection of productive techniques that usually depend on science and mathematics.

Engineering is an art in the sense that the problems it deals with do not have a single "correct" solution. A wide variety of solutions are usually possible--some better than others, some merely different--and designing these solutions requires creativity and a sensitivity to the widest possible context of the problem itself. As an accomplished artist masters the use of brush and canvas, the engineer masters his own tools: science, math, and imagination.