American Engineers: Marketing Engineering

[Ace Pace]

Ars Technica.

The first talk of my final day at AAAS was one I was uniquely qualified to attend, at least among my Nobel Intent colleagues. Titled "Improving Public Understanding of Engineering: From Research to Practice," it looked at what the public thinks about engineers, and how to re-invent the public face of the field. I'll start off by saying this was an interesting panel; it consisted of engineers, educators, and marketing experts. The overall goal was to find a way to attract more people to engineering—especially women and under-represented minorities.

The first talk of the morning was by Patrick Natale, a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and it focused on how the public perceives engineers and engineering. The first question that he posed was why? Why should we—the collective engineering societies (Chemical, Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical)—seek to improve the public understanding of engineering? Mr. Natale detailed a three-fold answer: improved technical literacy in the United States, the potential to draw students into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields of study, and finally to increase US competition on the global scale.


Before one can seek to improve the public perception of engineering, one needs to know what that perception is. The National Academy of Engineers (NAE) carried out a survey to find out, and the results were summarized as four key points that need to be addressed:

1. There is no public face to engineering
2. Many kids see engineers as desk jockeys
3. Many kids want a well paying job that makes a difference
4. Engineers are not seen as directly helping people

In order to combat this perception, the NAE sought to construct a message that was coordinated, consistent, and effective. To test which message was most efficient, they again turned to on-line surveys to see which had the broadest public appeal across many demographics. After compiling the responses, the message "Engineers make a world of difference," was the most appealing to both adults and teenagers. At that point the talk ended, but it left me with what I felt was an obvious question: "Now that there is a message, how will they [the NAE and engineering socities] get it out to the masses?" Mr. Natale hoped that the message would be given out by industry, universities, and the engineering societies through their advertising, which should reach the broadest base possible.

While this was an answer to my question, I am not sure if it was the best answer possible. It reminded me of an episode of the television show "The Wire," where a university professor wanted to start an intervention program for at-risk youth in Baltimore and went to the school system to meet with 17 to 18 year olds. After being laughed at by teachers and police, they introduced the professor to an 18 year old who had already spent a good deal of his life as a drug runner, and who was facing serious jail time for multiple violent offenses. At this point the researcher decided he might need to re-adjust his sights to younger children and begin the intervention earlier in life.

Now, I am sure many wonder where I am going with this, but I see a painful analogue to the situation with engineers and messages. I had never seen an engineering publication from a university or company, nor did I even knew that engineering societies existed until I was 17 and already enrolled in an engineering program in college. All the engineers I knew—and went to school with—knew, or thought, they wanted to be engineers when they arrived at college. In my opinion, this new public message about engineering needed to be focused at a younger audience.


Engineering for the Younger Crowd



The next pair of talks sought to do just that. The first was by Suzanne Jenniches, an engineer with the Northrop Grumman Corp. She focused on women in engineering and particularly how to attract young women to the field. According to research she presented, 61 percent of high school senior boys were ready to handle an engineering curriculum in college, while 57 percent of high school senior girls were similarly capable. However, this near parity falls apart when you look at enrollment numbers in U.S. colleges and universities. Nearly 80 percent of engineering students are men, and this percentage holds fairly steady all the way from enrolling freshman to those granted doctorates in engineering.

Ms. Jenniches focused on what may be some of the root causes of this gender disparity by looking at the message engineers generally give to young people. She highlighted two major themes that people take away from talking to engineers: that engineering is stressful and challenging, and that engineers stress the importance of superior science and math skills. The message that engineers put out is not relevant to what high school girls want to hear.

To combat this, she unveiled two initiatives to reach out to young girls who could be interested in science and engineering at a younger age. The first is Engineer Girl, a website that is focused on revealing the faces and stories of successful young women in engineering. The site is geared towards middle school (aged 11 to 13) girls and invites them to find out more about engineering and to view profiles of young women (in their 20s) who are practicing engineers. The second is the Engineer Your Life website, a site similar in scope to Engineer Girl, but more focused on high school and teenaged girls who have an interest in, or want to learn more about engineering.

The next talk sought out an even younger age group for an introduction to engineering—elementary school children (ages 5-10). Given by Christine Cunningham of the Museum of Science in Boston, the talk discussed the Engineering is Elementary (EiE) initiative that is being carried out in hundreds of schools across the country. This work first asked a question: what do children think engineers do? The overwhelming answers were: build bridges/houses/roads, fix cars, use or fix computers, and drive trains. While rather logical answers, they are clearly not quite right.

The EiE initiative sought to integrate engineering and technology concepts into the already existing elementary science education. It was designed for both teachers and students, and consists of a series of books that, instead of focusing directly on a field of engineering, target a technology problem or area of science that highlights an engineering field. Some examples are: sound for acoustic engineering, solids and liquids for chemical engineering, and electricity for electrical engineers. The program showed that when kids took a "test" of what they thought engineers did before and after going through this program, there was a marked difference. After the test, a statistically significant portion of the children were able to correctly identify what engineers did and worked on in their professional life. To me, this program seemed to have the potential to make the biggest impact.

Professional Marketing Ideas for Engineering

The remainder of the talks were vastly different, as they were given not by engineers, scientists, or educators, but by marketing professionals. These are the hitmen engineers need to talk to to really get their message out to the public. The first speaker in this series was Susan Traiman, the director of Education and Workforce Policy at the Business Roundtable, a Washington DC based thinktank. She discussed work her organization was doing with a marketing firm to make math and science more palatable to a teenage audience. The message they were trying to send out was that "math and science touch nearly everything in your everyday life."

The final speaker was Mitch Baranowski, of Bemporad Baranowski Marketing group, and he gave a talk on how engineering can overhaul its image in a professional manner. He stressed the idea that engineering needs a brand, and pointed out how easily famous brands were recognizable—as examples he showed the Nike swoosh and the Apple apple—things everyone knows on sight. He suggested many of the same things that the NAE work and previous speakers did: namely that engineering needs to move beyond math and science to creativity, and that there needs to be a public face to engineering. He felt that the campaign needed to be directed at six to twelve year old children.

When it comes to cost, he suggested that a campaign of the magnitude needed by engineering would cost upwards of 12 to 25 million dollars per year, and would need a two to three year commitment. While expensive, this is a small sum compared to the upwards of 400 million that the NAE spent each year on an advertising campaign that has gotten little in return, as the first talk disclosed.

With the grand challenges of engineering ahead of us, the US and the world need all the engineers they can produce. It seems that engineers as a group need to both teach children what they do and keep people interested through their teen years, to the point where they enter college or university to begin training to be engineers.

The comments following the article are interesting, in the sense that there seems to be very little transfare into engineering, and that most people who come into the field already know about it.

[Kodiak]

In all honesty, what they really need is a hit TV show. Some professions which have benefited from TV dramas:

Forensic Scientists: CSI
Lawyers: Every single law show that makes being a lawyer look like being a celebrity
Journalist: Dirt, and various newsroom dramas
Politics: The West Wing
Navy Officers: JAG

That's all I can think of for now. It seems that if there was a show which was constantly going to engineers for solutions and the engineers got to be heroes it would help. Right now the closest I can see is that guy in Numbers who uses his math-a-magic skills to solve crime.

[Kodiak]

Ghetto Edit:

The only shows that I can think of where engineers are considered evenly mildly important are Star Trek and other scifi shows, in which they are little more than glorified mechanics. Geordi La Forge and Chief O'Brien are some of the only exceptions to this, in which they had entire episodes devoted to them solving some sort of engineering problem in their respective series.

[Darth Wong]

I don't think you can dramatize engineering very well. For drama, people want to sex, violence, or immediate life and death situations, not "somebody might die two years from now if you won't change your mind, you asshole", which is about as dramatic as engineering ever gets, with the exception of extraordinary events like Apollo 13.

At the end of the day, you can't glamourize something that is just not glamourous. You can only be honest and say that society needs people who keep the lights on, not just a collection of glory-hounds. We have always been, and will always continue to be, the sons of Martha.

[Kodiak]

I don't think you can dramatize engineering very well. For drama, people want to sex, violence, or immediate life and death situations, not "somebody might die two years from now if you won't change your mind, you asshole", which is about as dramatic as engineering ever gets, with the exception of extraordinary events like Apollo 13.

You could have the drama of kick-backs, falsifying data, office politics, and office romance. I'll admit, that'd be really forcing it and it would likely come off as cheesy, but it's not impossible

At the end of the day, you can't glamourize something that is just not glamourous. You can only be honest and say that society needs people who keep the lights on, not just a collection of glory-hounds. We have always been, and will always continue to be, the sons of Martha.

Perhaps if there could be a show similar to American Inventor only with less cheesy-ness and more cool-factor? Seems like you could have some sort of Engineering reality TV show ala Top Model or Top Chef where they have really limited time to build something really cool like CO2 lasers or rail-launchers or something.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't think you can dramatize engineering very well. For drama, people want to sex, violence, or immediate life and death situations, not "somebody might die two years from now if you won't change your mind, you asshole", which is about as dramatic as engineering ever gets, with the exception of extraordinary events like Apollo 13.

At the end of the day, you can't glamourize something that is just not glamourous. You can only be honest and say that society needs people who keep the lights on, not just a collection of glory-hounds. We have always been, and will always continue to be, the sons of Martha.

I haven't said this on the board before, but I've actually gone back to school to study engineering. It came out of the mundane decision that I wanted a secure professional field to fall back on in what I see as an extremely insecure future, when my savings have been eaten away by health problems. It'll take a long time, since I was one of those dirty liberal arts people before, and have to start at the bottom more or less in terms of requirements, but I consider it quite worthwhile. No career ambitions, really (a luxury of someone without a family), so likely graduate school after that.

It's not a decision you can be sexed into, so to speak. It's very much a rational one, and really that's the whole bloody point. I am not sure that I would want anyone as an engineer who didn't come about the decision to be one in anything other than a rational manner.

I admit there's a secondary impulse that if Obama opens up the military to homosexuals I'll still be young enough when I finish my degree to apply for a National Guard OCS spot on the strength of it. My medical problems aren't sufficient to disqualify me for anything short of flight operations.

[AK_Jedi]

Perhaps if there could be a show similar to American Inventor only with less cheesy-ness and more cool-factor? Seems like you could have some sort of Engineering reality TV show ala Top Model or Top Chef where they have really limited time to build something really cool like CO2 lasers or rail-launchers or something.

There are already television shows similar to that. Junkyard wars have teams building vehicles out of scraps and junk in a limited time period.

Also, Mythbusters has quite a bit of really cool engineering challenges in it. Come to think of it, mythbusters is probably the best show with engineering I've seen. Its got the cool factor (lets make a rocket powered by diet coke and mentos), its got the science content, and its got humor.

[MKSheppard]

Bring back big projects like the B-70, and SST, and you'll see more engineering students.

[Jawawithagun]

Ghetto Edit:

The only shows that I can think of where engineers are considered evenly mildly important are Star Trek and other scifi shows, in which they are little more than glorified mechanics. Geordi La Forge and Chief O'Brien are some of the only exceptions to this, in which they had entire episodes devoted to them solving some sort of engineering problem in their respective series.

Well, if you're not demanding the engineer to be working in anything close to a conventional engineering environment you could add MacGyver and A-Team to that list.

[Kodiak]

Ghetto Edit:

The only shows that I can think of where engineers are considered evenly mildly important are Star Trek and other scifi shows, in which they are little more than glorified mechanics. Geordi La Forge and Chief O'Brien are some of the only exceptions to this, in which they had entire episodes devoted to them solving some sort of engineering problem in their respective series.

Well, if you're not demanding the engineer to be working in anything close to a conventional engineering environment you could add MacGyver and A-Team to that list.

Hell, if I thought it would help get more youth interested in Engineering, I'd be all for it.

[Alan Bolte]

I am highly suspicious of the following quote, and doubt very much that the researchers really accounted for what it takes to prepare someone for a degree in science or engineering:

According to research she presented, 61 percent of high school senior boys were ready to handle an engineering curriculum in college, while 57 percent of high school senior girls were similarly capable.

I mean really, 60 percent? 60 percent of the population could do that sort of job if only they thought, "hey, that sounds like a good idea!"? What did they do, just count the kids that passed chemistry?

Quite honestly, I have trouble seeing this as a failure to draw people into engineering. It's more about a lack of professionals. I'm not sure that's the right word. There's only so many people in each graduating high school class that go on to be doctors, scientists, engineers, and so forth. There's an incredible shortage of medical professionals, one that's well-publicized, and there are plenty of TV-shows about hospitals. I doubt that there's anywhere as large a shortage of engineers (if there is a shortage of engineers) as there is a shortage of nurses. If anything, engineering (as well as math-related fields like computer science) is drawing away potential nurses, to a field that's lower-stress, as far as I can tell.

It's true that engineering is failing to draw in women and minorities, and from that I can understand the desire to change the public face of engineering. From a larger perspective, though, I feel the real problem is the education system, which tries to get everyone to go to college, rather than focus on preparing those with the capacity to acquire a degree that really matters. It doesn't matter if children think math and science are cool if they drop out of college or transfer to a less demanding major. That's certainly not the only problem with the education system, but it's the first thing that comes to mind.

[Hawkwings]

They're prepared for the engineering curriculum, for being engineers.

[Winston Blake]

In all honesty, what they really need is a hit TV show. Some professions which have benefited from TV dramas:

Forensic Scientists: CSI
Lawyers: Every single law show that makes being a lawyer look like being a celebrity
Journalist: Dirt, and various newsroom dramas
Politics: The West Wing
Navy Officers: JAG

That's all I can think of for now. It seems that if there was a show which was constantly going to engineers for solutions and the engineers got to be heroes it would help. Right now the closest I can see is that guy in Numbers who uses his math-a-magic skills to solve crime.

I haven't seen Dirt or the West Wing, but I think it's safe to say that all of those shows involve investigation and/or the guts of the work is talking to people. Numbers only manages to sex up math by attaching it to investigation. House is all about investigation.

These are basically 'whodunnits' with 'cases' that can show a fresh bunch of characters and motives each week. These people are the focus of the main characters, people with interesting traits from outside the main characters' profession. The problem is that engineering isn't focused on investigating events or interacting with people - it's on inanimate stuff.

You would need to distort the role of engineers, like how CSI conflates the coolest parts of several professions. The technical side would have to take a back seat to the characters interacting.

The closest thing I can think of would be a garage where a broken car and its owner pops in every week. The guys responsible for fixing it use their technical knowledge to catch clues about 'what really happened' and for for some bizarre reason go investigating themselves. That's not really engineering though.

Or better yet, a consulting engineer who gets called in to investigate accidents and uses his skills to solve the weekly mystery. Or a company of various engineers, so you get a range of different engineering fields. Some kind of Engineering Accident Investigation, Inc. E.g. a bridge collapses or a truck goes out of control or there's a nasty chemical spill - and only our intrepid heroes can figure out what really happened and who's really responsible!

[Shroom Man 777]

You could dramatize the failure of the US infrastructure and have a team of "mercenary engineers" going from state to state and city to city to fix everything. It'd be a good show and depict the future problems of your country.

Fuck it, if those CSIs can go from mere labrats to actual interrogators and field cops and go all Horatio Caine and shoot Brazil or stuff, we can have these Mercenary Engineer Movie Stars act as electricians, plumbers, car-accident analysts, airplane crash investigators, computer-whatever tech dudes, inventors and techno-babbulators. Then there are those hot Wrench Wenches!

[Adrian Laguna]

There are already television shows similar to that. Junkyard wars have teams building vehicles out of scraps and junk in a limited time period.

Also, Mythbusters has quite a bit of really cool engineering challenges in it.

Except that these shows don't make people think "engineering". Junkyard Wars makes me think "mechanic" and Mythbusters specifies that the main two guys had careers in special effects.

[K. A. Pital]

Just a recall of how we did it once in Russia.

Back in the 60s Russia needed to popularize nuclear physics.

Mikhail Romm, one of the leading directors, filmed a nuclear physics drama about a young engineer struggling with radiation sickness but still pushing forward in a very important scientific experiment, called "9 days of one year". It was a huge success and according to public polls, was the best 1962 movie in Russia, and the best male lead role, also awarded multiple times at international film festivals (Melbourne, San-Francisco).

I believe something similar could be done for other engineering professions too, and in fact I believe such movies also exist, in Russia and elsewhere. And why not? There's always a drama and a possible danger present in any profession.

Say, civil construction? Sure! Film a movie about how a lack of qualification for the project engineer leads to construction failure during works, kills a friend of the engineer, or something. It's not hard to create the drama.

[Darth Wong]

There are already television shows similar to that. Junkyard wars have teams building vehicles out of scraps and junk in a limited time period.

Also, Mythbusters has quite a bit of really cool engineering challenges in it.

Except that these shows don't make people think "engineering". Junkyard Wars makes me think "mechanic" and Mythbusters specifies that the main two guys had careers in special effects.

This reminds me of the fact that almost all of the general population is unaware of the distinction between technicians and engineers.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's hard to really get people hooked on things they may never consider as a profession anyway, given as mentioned above, various roles people were unaware of only caught on because of dramatic licence. CSI has people performing a dozen jobs that are far removed from the strictly lab based, or detective based venues in real life which don't overlap. House has an intriguing doctor as the centre of the story, otherwise the whole thing would be just another hospital drama, albeit, with some diagnostic work in place of crack surgery methods.

Films are no different, with the likes of Outbreak having a political conspiracy and military chase element thrown in, likely because culturing samples in Petri dishes is fucking dull.

Apart from a documentary angle that follows real engineers, or a game show like Scrapheap Challenge, I can't see a way of bringing engineering to the screen that isn't convoluted and untrue to the career itself, or is hideously expensive with big FX shots of bridges collapsing, planes crashing and buildings rocking.

[Kodiak]

*snip*

These are basically 'whodunnits' with 'cases' that can show a fresh bunch of characters and motives each week. These people are the focus of the main characters, people with interesting traits from outside the main characters' profession. The problem is that engineering isn't focused on investigating events or interacting with people - it's on inanimate stuff.

I disagree with you there. A HUGE part of what I do is finding failures in parts, figuring out what went wrong in an assembly, or why we had a $12million semiconductor processing machine vent flammable gas and explode. Granted, not all engineers are doing investigation, but tons of what we do is figuring out what's been done, how to apply it, and how to make it better.

The closest thing I can think of would be a garage where a broken car and its owner pops in every week. The guys responsible for fixing it use their technical knowledge to catch clues about 'what really happened' and for for some bizarre reason go investigating themselves. That's not really engineering though.

You actually just gave me an idea. It would actually be sort of like a CSI. I had a structures professor who was a consultant for an insurance company in investigating structural collapses and failures. He was responsible for figuring out how the building failed, why it failed, who caused the failure, who was responsible, and testifying about it in court.

Or better yet, a consulting engineer who gets called in to investigate accidents and uses his skills to solve the weekly mystery. Or a company of various engineers, so you get a range of different engineering fields. Some kind of Engineering Accident Investigation, Inc. E.g. a bridge collapses or a truck goes out of control or there's a nasty chemical spill - and only our intrepid heroes can figure out what really happened and who's really responsible!

Also good.

[Darth Wong]

The problem with engineering drama is that the only way to make villains is to go totally cartoonish. Most engineering failures are due to incompetence, ignorance, or at worst, short-sightedness. When you meet the kind of people who cause problems, they almost always sincerely believe that it's not going to cause any problems. They certainly don't think they're going to kill anyone.

In crime dramas, you're dealing with honest-to-goodness villains: people who hurt others, who know they're hurting others, who plan to hurt others, and who may even enjoy it. People like that in a drama; they want a bad guy.

[andrewgpaul]

This reminds me of the fact that almost all of the general population is unaware of the distinction between technicians and engineers.

As a member of said general public, could you explain the difference, so we're in the same boat?

[Winston Blake]

I disagree with you there. A HUGE part of what I do is finding failures in parts, figuring out what went wrong in an assembly, or why we had a $12million semiconductor processing machine vent flammable gas and explode. Granted, not all engineers are doing investigation, but tons of what we do is figuring out what's been done, how to apply it, and how to make it better.

You're right, that was unclear. The 'investigation' I was trying to convey was investigating the behaviour of people, rather than that of inanimate objects.

In crime dramas, you're dealing with honest-to-goodness villains: people who hurt others, who know they're hurting others, who plan to hurt others, and who may even enjoy it. People like that in a drama; they want a bad guy.

First year engineers in my course were all shown a video detailing the Challenger shuttle disaster. The managers came off as callous assholes who wanted to launch no matter what the engineers said, or they'd lose face. To make a villain, you just need to convert 'I didn't think it would fail' to 'I didn't care if it failed'.

Another example of hateable villains would be some suppliers for the Golden Gate Bridge project (at least I think it was that bridge). They subversively bought cheaper, weaker wire and wound it into the regulation-strength wire to make the suspension cables. So it ended up with only a 4x safety factor, instead of the designed 6x. Again, 'I didn't care if it failed'.

[Civil War Man]

This reminds me of the fact that almost all of the general population is unaware of the distinction between technicians and engineers.

As a member of said general public, could you explain the difference, so we're in the same boat?

Generally, technicians fix the shit that breaks, while engineers design shit that doesn't break as much (or as badly).

[Darth Wong]

This reminds me of the fact that almost all of the general population is unaware of the distinction between technicians and engineers.

As a member of said general public, could you explain the difference, so we're in the same boat?

Technicians work with technology. They maintain it, fix it, supply it, etc. Engineers design new technology or supervise technicians who are repairing or maintaining existing technology. There is some blurring of the lines in practice, but the actual job description of an engineer is to make design decisions, not to be crawling under a machine and doing anything to it himself.

[Civil War Man]

The line will also get practically erased when you are dealing with a brand new technology. But that's because in cases like that, the person who best knows how to properly maintain it is often the person who designed it.