ME297 Forecasting the Future of Engineering * (*and your future as an engineer)

Course Objective

The field of engineering is undergoing profound changes and these changes will affect your career in ways that previous generations of engineers would never have imagined. For example, engineering is now global. How will this affect where you work, and how often you move, not merely to different cities, but to different countries. And engineering is undergoing dramatic automation -- a single engineer at a computer can produce what it once took a team of engineers to design, and in a fraction of the time once required. Thus, while there will be more demand for engineering in the future, will there also be demand for more engineers? Perhaps engineering will become like agriculture: -- 60 years ago over half of all jobs in the US were in agriculture, but thanks to automation and structural change, agriculture accounts for only a few percent of the labor pool even though the industry is larger than ever. Is engineering’s future one of a few superstars and unemployment for everyone else?

As these examples suggest, engineering students must think strategically about their future even before they graduate. What is your strategic direction? How will you surf the changes to come? What challenges will the engineering profession be expected to solve and how will you contribute to the effort? Where will you be in 30 years? What will be the innovations and new industries created by engineers in the next several decades and where will they be based? Given future-casting skills, what would your personal goals, and your desired sphere of influence be? Can you craft a personal roadmap?

We will explore these issues in class, augmented by group work and guest speakers, and individually through the assignments described below. The work product from this class (both collective and individual) will be archived on-line and in the Stanford Library as a resource for the faculty and other students. And of course, when you return for your 30th reunion, you --and your classmates-- will have the opportunity to read and reflect on what you prepared in this class and brag about how skilled you were as an engineering futurist!