Complete professionalism for engineers

It is noted that the completely professional engineer is able to interface with many socioeconomical constraints. Interfacing and the constraints are addressed here in a new approach. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology is stressing the importance of `breadth for the engineering student.´ The pressure of technical courses, however, limits the number of humanistic-social electives reasonably possible. A novel approach reduces this limitation. It takes advantage of three factors: (1) above-average innate ability of junior and senior engineering students; (2) their special training to focus on the essential fundamentals in course material; and (3) as in the technical areas, a relatively small number of fundamentals (many already learned in engineering courses) are applicable over a broad range of nontechnical subjects. These factors make possible the compression of many important, nontechnical electives into one course. It includes psychology, interpersonal relations, management, proposal presentations, project management, technical communications, engineering economics, and the legal and ethical aspects of engineering. It is argued that students are better served by the proposed plan than by uncoordinated electives