Bridging the gap
Virginia engineering schools create innovative strategies
to address the national engineer shortage

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
June 2006

Ernst Volgenau knows something about the job market for engineers. He worked as an electrical engineer before founding SRA International, a $1 billion information technology services company based in Reston. “For as long as I can remember, there have never enough engineers to meet demand,” he says.

In recent years, however, the shortage has reached acute levels, and SRA International is having an even tougher time filling job openings. U.S. engineering schools are turning out just 59,500 graduates a year, according to the National Research Council. That’s about 5 percent less than the schools produced 20 years ago and only about half of the number needed to meet current U.S. demand.

The organization estimates that China is graduating 300,000 engineers and India another 200,000 each year. Russia, Japan and many Western European countries also are investing heavily in engineering schools. American companies used to be able to rely on these engineers moving to the United States to help make up the shortfall. Now, however, many foreign-trained engineers are put off by the arduous process of obtaining H1B professional work visas. They also are beginning to find more opportunity in the emerging economies in their countries.

The situation, say business executives and university officials, could eventually lead U.S. businesses to outsource their engineering services. This prospect — and its potential effect on U.S. competitiveness — has many people worried.

Volgenau is so concerned that last fall he gave $10 million to the George Mason University (GMU) School of Information Technology and Engineering. GMU officials were so grateful that the school now bears Volgenau’s name.

“The most critical crisis facing this country is the shortage of scientists and engineers and the people that are going to create the technology that will continue to make this country thrive and survive,” Volgenau says. “The number of students enrolling in math and science curriculums has not been adequate, and we need creative initiatives to solve this problem.”

Officials at Virginia engineering schools are also concerned, but some don’t think the situation will become a crisis. They believe the superiority of U.S.-educated engineers will make American companies reluctant to outsource engineering services in any huge volume.

Robert Mattauch, retiring dean of the School of Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, agrees that U.S. engineers are the best in the world but, he says, there simply aren’t enough of them. He believes the engineering shortage could lead to economic troubles.

“When we stop being the innovators, the first producers of all this stuff, we will start down this slippery slope, and we’ll lose our technological leadership position, and our lifestyle will decrease dramatically,” Mattauch says. Still, he admits, there are no simple solutions. Bridging the gap will require a sustained, multipronged approach, but Virginia engineering schools have already implemented a number of strategies. These include:
• expanding capacity;
• focusing on improving quality;
• reaching out to middle- and high-school students to inspire interest and preparation at a younger age;
• recruiting more women and minorities;
• changing the sometimes negative perception of engineering; and
• enlisting more help from the private sector.

Increasing enrollment and graduation rates are major goals for most engineering schools. GMU, for example, would like to boost its number of engineering graduates by at least a third during the next five years, growing from 930 to 1,300 students. Old Dominion University’s Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology is already enjoying an enrollment increase, seeing its number of students grow 17 percent during the past few years, thanks in part to a more aggressive recruiting campaign.

Still, engineering school officials find that their ability to meet enrollment goals is burdened by the difficulty of finding potential students. These students must have advanced math and science skills and a willingness to shoulder an engineering program workload. Engineering schools are now working with secondary, middle and primary schools to build interest in the discipline and to change the perception of engineering as a career suitable only to nerdy students with a genius for mathematics.

ODU, for instance, is involved in Project Lead the Way, a national mentoring organization that trains high-school and middle-school teachers in the fundamentals of engineering. Virginia Tech also has created a program that gives graduates the credentials to teach engineering at the high-school level.

“Young people think engineering is more about things than people, which isn’t true, but the reality of what engineering is, isn’t reaching potential students,” says Lloyd Griffiths, dean of the Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering at GMU. “So we’re sending our graduates and soon-to-graduate students to junior high schools and having them talk directly to the students and say: ‘My job is fantastic. Here’s what I do all day. I love it. And here’s why.’ ”

This outreach also includes trying to encourage more women to study engineering. Bob Black, spokesman for the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), says that women made up 20 percent of national enrollment several years ago, but now that number has fallen to 18 percent.

Paxton Marshall, associate dean of undergraduate studies at the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia, says schools need to redefine engineering to get girls to consider the field as a career option. His school relies on several student groups, including Girls Excited about Math and Science (GEMS), to tout the merits of an engineering career to high-school and middle-school girls.

Engineering, Marshall explains, has a reputation for being cold, impersonal, uncreative work connected to commercialization. “But there are so many opportunities to show how engineering is truly creative, how engineering developments are making life better for the poor, the helpless, the elderly, for those living in the Third World,” he says. “Showing that might help attract a group of students — a lot of them women — who want to help people and who might otherwise go into medical fields or social work.”

To further attract potential students, school officials are offering innovative incentives, and they’re looking to the private sector for help. GMU’s engineering school, for example, is trying to raise money for hundreds of full and partial scholarships, including at least 100 for National Merit finalists. “There has been insufficient funding for science and engineering disciplines, and a growing number of students need that help to attend top schools,” says Griffiths. “So we’re going to the corporate world and saying, ‘It’s in your best interest to help us attract more students from more diverse backgrounds to our school.’ ”

Schools also are encouraging high-school students to take courses in engineering that can be accepted for credit at a state university. VCU recently created High Tech Academy with computer chip maker Infineon Technologies to interest 11th- and 12th- graders in Henrico County schools in careers in science and engineering. Students attend for a half-day session every day during the school year. The program includes courses in physics, advanced mathematics, engineering and applied manufacturing technology. Students are required to work in teams on industrial applications, and they participate in two-week internships at Infineon’s plant in eastern Henrico (which recently became part of a new company called Qimonda North America).

Teachers in the program are fully accredited and approved by VCU, notes Henry Becker, president of Qimonda North America. “Basically, students have a year of college under their belts,” he explains, noting that his company is working with VCU in a number of other ways to “try and fill the pipeline” with more U.S. graduates.

But some of Virginia’s public engineering schools still face problems in increasing their capacity because of a lack of state funding. “Based upon state budgets and state constraints, we see no way to grow the [Virginia Tech] College of Engineering at the undergraduate level at this point,” says Michael P. Deisenroth, acting associate dean of academic affairs. He says that the goal for the next several years is to maintain enrollment rates but increase recruiting efforts and grow the applicant pool as a way to improve the overall quality of students.

VCU is building a second engineering building largely with private donations. Situated next to a new business school building, the facility will allow total engineering enrollment to grow 68 percent to 2,000 students. Russ Jamison, the engineering school’s incoming dean, wants to develop programs with VCU’s business school, medical school and Center for Life Sciences Education. He says that engineers with broad backgrounds will give U.S. companies a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

Virginia’s engineering schools hope that the outreach efforts they are making now will expand and improve the student pool in the future. “The key is to reach out to young people at an earlier age and get them truly excited about engineering and give them the education and skills to pursue it as a career,” says Marshall at U.Va. “It’s a highly creative, wonderfully rewarding profession. I think as more and more students realize that and get that desire for it, then most everything else will fall into place.”