Eric Tappert, PE
PSPE Communications Committee Chair
Welcome to the PE Reporter, the publication for professional engineers in Pennsylvania. We enhanced the publication to help satisfy your reading pleasure in several ways:
1. There is a new column on membership benefits. Each issue we will describe another benefit of your membership, in the hopes of keeping you informed and enhancing your professional life.
2. Another new feature is the “View from the Window” series of opinion pieces by members with long and meritorious experience. Hopefully this will help generate discussion of issues facing the engineering community.
3. So that you can respond, we will publish “Letters to the Editor.” Commentary on current issues or PE Reporter articles/columns is invited. Conciseness is appreciated and we reserve the right to edit and/or refrain from publishing inappropriate responses.
4. Feel free to share the PE Reporter and/or portions thereof with your co-workers.
5. Naturally we will continue to include all the Society news and feature articles as always.
A Blast from the Past…
In the fall issue of the PE Reporter we are reprinting an article that first appeared in 1935 by D. B. Steinman, the founding President of NSPE. Truly a well presented view of the vision that Steinman had for our profession and Society. Of course we need to look at this in light of our current view of history, which has been seriously eroded by rapid advances in technology.
For example, in the class I teach there is an assignment to report on the societal changes caused by technological advances. A couple semesters ago a group of student chose electricity as their topic and concluded that it was nice stuff, without which they couldn’t charge their iPhones…. Not an unexpected result from folks who never washed clothes by hand or used kerosene lamps for evening illumination. All too often we view history in this light: as something “nice”, but not really pertinent to today.
On the other hand, it is informative to look to the past for direction. Steinman lists 20 objectives for the profession and our Society, all of which are applicable to today’s environment. Indeed we have made great progress, but there still is lots of work to be done. As an exercise, look over those 20 objectives and relate them to the programs that NSPE, PSPE and the local chapters offer today. I think you will find that we still are on target and making progress on every objective. But the job isn’t finished. Ask yourself how you can be part of our continuing efforts.
One of Steinman’s objectives is to “…extend our membership until every registered engineer having any professional consciousness is enrolled. In this manner, we can attain the status of a clearly defined, organized, and integrated profession, with solidarity of purpose and concentration of strength”. Somehow I have the feeling that most, if not all, of us knows non-members who qualify as “engineers having any professional consciousness”. Pass Steinman’s article on to them along with a membership application so they can join the ranks.
Enjoy.
