Workforce Priorities in the New Year

Consumer and corporate cutbacks will significantly affect nearly every community, including ours. With this in mind, ASME has directed more resources to workforce issues and the role of engineers as it becomes more decentralized and fills the generation gaps. More and more engineers will work independently and sometimes remotely, with emphasis on connecting professionally with teams and associates dependent on knowledge and accessibility. Knowledge has and will continue to provide the competitive edge.

Thomas M. Barlow

I’ve spent considerable time this year, as your president, talking about the growth of distance learning and continuing education opportunities, and how this helps to close the generational gaps and geographical distances. ASME has long considered the importance of staying connected through professional networks that nurture innovation. At the same time, ASME global growth has served to expand the reach of its members. The sharing of learning networks benefits engineers individually and serves to address the needs of business and industry.

Our strategic priorities for engineering workforce development have set goals to expand the capacity and effectiveness of the workforce through several initiatives that focus on students and early career engineers. These include promoting collaboration with other engineering societies to increase public awareness, and radically changing how engineering students and early career members experience ASME in all facets of their participation and encounters. ASME will continue to offer professional development programs aimed at preparing a global engineering workforce at every career phase, and we will explore how to better define professional development in today’s marketplace.

ASME offers mentoring programs, a solid professional practice curriculum, a digital library and online learning capabilities, as well as conference opportunities, short courses, career forums, and ventures such as certification through Engineering Management Certification International (EMCI) and participation in the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) evaluations.

ASME’s online forums, such as ASME PeerLink, are readily accessible to all interested members and can help in building communities and opportunities for global networking from any desktop. Of course, taking full advantage of these forums depends on self-motivation and communication skills on the part of participants. Our initiative to continually improve the ASME experience will require continuous dialog and feedback, both from within ASME and with those who partner with us.

I hope that ASME provides an opportunity for you to reach out, make connections, receive training and make the changes needed for success in today’s workforce. Collaboration has become a key component to reshaping how we work, conduct our business and live our lives. As we set our sights on the new year, ASME’s strategic priority on workforce initiatives will help us to identify new opportunities and business practices that enable engineers, everywhere, to better negotiate through difficult economic times.

On this front, ASME and our many volunteers will continue to assess our programs by setting goals and reviewing budgets in the upcoming months. I fully appreciate that planning for the 2010 fiscal year will require hard work on everyone’s part, and I look forward to sharing the new year with you and seeing what actions we can set into motion together.

— Thomas M. Barlow
ASME President, 2008–2009

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