To begin our program,
we thought it would be appropriate
to hear from a real leader
in the transportation engineering profession.
Please welcome NSPE President-Elect,
Mr. Christopher Stone.
Well good morning.
Thanks for braving the traffic
to get here so early.
Well I want to add my welcome.
The National Society for Professional Engineers,
or NSPE, is a society of engineering professionals
from all engineering disciplines.
And we work to promote the ethical
and competent practice of engineering
and promote professional engineering licensure
for every engineer.
For the last seventy-five years,
NSPE has represented licensed professional engineers
and served the public by promoting
the competent and ethical practice of engineering.
As a licensed professional engineer,
we take an oath and have the responsibility to
protect the health, safety and welfare of the public
in the practice of engineering.
So how many of you are considering
a future in engineering?
How many of you are already enrolled in
a program or maybe have been accepted to a
college that has an engineering program?
Ah, quite a few.
How many undecideds do we have?
A couple undecideds.
Who's here because they got out of class today?
Ah, see! There's always a couple, you know? There's always a couple.
Well for those of you that are considering
a future in engineering or undecided,
I was about at that same place about thirty years ago.
My background is that I am an Army brat.
My father was a career Army officer.
He was highly decorated, served in three wars.
And the Army was all that my three brothers and I
really knew as a profession.
We followed my father around the country
and overseas at different duty assignments.
In fact, I went to three different high schools.
My father finally retired and I
was a senior in high school.
When I was a senior in high school
and he became the superintendent of a
military high school in Virginia
and that's where I attended my last year of high school
and actually graduated from.
Now my brothers and I, we always
knew that we would go into the military
since that's all we'd ever known.
So when I graduated from high school
I started looking around for military colleges
and I applied and was accepted to Virginia Military Institute.
My older brother had already gone off to
military college in Georgia and not being one to follow
in his footsteps I chose my own path
and decided on V.M.I.
The summer before going to school
I would talk to my parents about my major
and since obviously I had to major in something
and I really had no idea what I wanted to major in.
I just figured I would go to V.M.I. and in four years
I would get out and start my career in the Army
like my father and brother before me,
so my major was really not all that important.
So the day came when I matriculated
to V.M.I. and I still had not selected a major.
But you have to understand one thing:
When I started high school I
went to my father and asked,
"What foreign language should I take?"
He said, "Take French. It's the international language."
Well three years later I finished high school French
and I vowed never ever, ever again to take
a foreign language.
So on my first day at V.M.I.
you're directed down to the gymnasium
where they have a series of tables set up in
alphabetical order where you declare your major.
So I walked up to the first table
and it happened to be civil engineering.
And I asked the professor sitting behind the table
I said, "If I major in civil engineering do I have
to take a foreign language?"
And he said, "No."
So I signed up.
And that's how I became an engineer.
Four years later, I graduated with a degree
in civil engineering and I have never once
regretted the choice to major in civil engineering.
I love the technology and the practical application
of what I was learning in college.
You just don't learn math and physics to pass an examination,
but to solve real world engineering problems.
Computers were also just starting to come of age.
I remember we had one mainframe computer
on campus that actually would fill this room
and for my senior project I was only able to use
the computer at night because my project,
the analysis of a concrete hyperbolic paraboloid roof shell
took so much computational time
that they limited my usage from midnight to
six o'clock in the morning.
Today there's probably a thousand times more power
in an everyday laptop or probably your IPhone
than we had in our college mainframe computer.
That's how much technology has changed.
So just imagine the technological changes
that you will see in your lifetime.
I bet they will be just as dramatic
and just as impactful
on your life and your career.
Now after graduating from V.M.I.
I applied and was accepted at the
University of Virginia
and eighteen months later I completed
my master's degree in civil engineering
with an emphasis in structural engineering.
After an abbreviated tour in the US Army,
a requirement upon graduation from V.M.I.,
I started my career as a structural engineering intern
and four years later took the
Professional Engineers Exam
and became a licensed professional engineer in
the state of Virginia.
My engineering career has taken me
all over the country and the world.
Interestingly enough, shortly after receiving
my P.E. license, my boss came to me and he asked
if I would be interested in a new engineering assignment
in a new office that they had just opened.
I accepted.
And I moved where?
Not France.
But actually Madrid, Spain where I lived for four years
and yes, I did learn to finally speak a foreign language
and became fluent in Spanish.
So the irony in the story is that sometimes
things happen for a reason
and also never turn down a chance to learn a foreign language.
Over the last thirty years,
engineering has taken me around the world.
Every day is a set of new challenges
and the projects are all unique.
I've worked on everything from large
convention center projects
to hospitals to high-tech facilities and schools,
industrial facilities, designed bridges and waterfront structures
and even designed three transatlantic abort landing sites
for NASA's space shuttle.
One in Spain, one in Morocco
and one in West Africa.
So there's no end to the types of projects you can work on
as an engineer and no limit to the location
of where those projects might be.
Now many fields of engineering are available to you.
Probably too many to mention, but some of the more well-known
Engineering majors are civil, environmental, structural,
mechanical and electrical.
But other new areas in biomedical, biomechanical,
chemical, sustainable, phototonics, computer, nuclear,
mineral and agricultural are rapidly gaining
ground in popularity.
As varied are the disciplines,
so too are opportunities for you in engineering.
Even in today's less vigorous economic climate
the demand for qualified engineers remains strong.
Many economists are predicting a huge brain drain
in engineering as many of my generation
begin to retire.
So it's a real opportunity for
you I think.
According to the US Department of Labor,
all engineering career fields will have above
average employment growth opportunities
through 2016.
And fields such as computers, biomedical,
sustainability and environmental engineering
are leading the way and expected
to have 25% job growth by 2016.
It's also interesting to note that in a
recent survey completed by the
National Association of Colleges and Employers,
which tracks college graduates and their
job offers,
found that degrees in engineering
account for twelve out of fifteen
top-paying majors.
Petroleum engineering was by far
the highest paying degree with an
average starting salary of
83,000$ a year, thanks largely in part
to the resource's growing scarcity.
So the demand for graduates with
skills in engineering is increasing,
but the real story is the critical need for
engineers today and in the future.
I think it's true our local and global
communities face genuine problems
that are going to have to be studied and solved
by your generation, not my generation.
Call them problems or challenges,
they are significant. And they're included,
but not limited to,
our country's aging infrastructure, our roads,
our bridges, our transit systems, our energy dependence
on fossil fuels, our decline in potable drinking water,
and our treatment of hazardous materials and waste water.
As our infrastructure deteriorates, we all suffer,
individually and in our businesses and government.
Traffic congestion, which is probably pretty evident
by the lack of folks here, alone cost an estimated
nearly one hundred billion dollars a year
in lost productivity and delays.
The infrastructure that used to give the United States
a competitive edge has deteriorated to the point that
by 2018, it's predicted that Brazil, Russia, China
and India will surpass all the G8 countries
in Gross Domestic Product.
Now each year the American Society of Civil Engineers
grades our country's infrastructure
using fifteen categories.
Grades range from a high of C+
for solid waste and a low to D-
for drinking water, inland waterways, levies,
roads and waste water.
Ultimately, the cost to raise
all the categories to a minimal acceptable level,
mediocre, will cost at least three trillion dollars.
Perhaps more worrisome is a lack of funding
to make the repairs needed to our infrastructure.
And as of March 25th, 2011, the USA total
public debt outstanding was 14.2 trillion dollars
and our 2010 annual GDP was only 14.6 trillion dollars.
So it's a fact that we're going to have to
do more with less,
and engineers of the future will have to both be
creative and inventive in their design solutions,
and in the financing of public works projects.
Now as my generation retires,
your generation is left to face these
problems and challenges.
I for one, have a tremendous amount
of trust in your generation.
In large part through engineering
and the development of new technologies,
will excel in this starring role
to develop the solutions demanded for our country.
Now I have two children
and they're both young adults.
And they hate it when I give advice,
which is probably the reason why
neither one of them pursued
a career in engineering.
But somehow I still feel compelled
to offer my opinion on two areas
that need immediate attention
in engineering in the engineering profession
for which you can play a huge role.
And you can play that role right now.
The first is the need for diversity within
our profession.
And the second is to continue
the dialogue of sustainability.
It's my opinion that any profession
should reflect the face of the society
and ours does not.
For years the engineering profession
has been a white male dominated profession,
but thankfully today that is changing.
And change is good
since a diversity of backgrounds and thinking only yields
better engineering solutions.
So NSPE is working closely with
the Society of Women Engineers,
the National Society of Black Engineers,
the National Society of Hispanic Engineers
and others to work jointly
to not only remove roadblocks from
entering the profession,
but to actively promote entering the engineering profession.
A higher education organization recently studied
the question as to why more women
don't choose engineering as a profession.
Among the interesting results was this fact:
That women may actually have a better capacity
to do math and solve engineering problems than men.
So, young women in the audience, I suggest
that now is the time for you to take this step
to help us solve the challenges your generation
has presented, by way of a career in engineering.
Sustainability.
No matter what side of the debate you fall on,
sustainability is here to stay.
And how we solve the problem will play a large role
in your quality of life
and that of your children.
Resources are becoming more and more limited
and society's going to be looking to engineers
to solve a very complicated problem.
Do you realize that we have destroyed over
97% of the ancient forests of North America?
That US farmers and ranchers draw out
more than 20 billion more gallons of water
from the ground than are replaced by rainfall?
That the Ogallala Aquifer,
the largest underwater river serving the Great Plains
will dry up in twenty to thirty years
at the current rate of extraction,
and that we lose 25 billion tons of topsoil
due to erosion every year?
All while the population of the world
increases at a rate of 70 million people per year.
The demands on our natural resources are overwhelming.
Our dependence on fossil fuels is staggering.
And we're not developing
sustainable renewable energy sources fast enough
to replace what we are consuming.
A very recent study
of known oil reserves in the world
projected that we have hit the tipping point.
Do you think the oil in the world will
run out in 500 years?
250 years?
Less than 100 years?
Actually at the current rate of consumption,
scientists and engineers predict that
the world will consume the entire world's
oil supply, known oil supply, in
as little as 42 years.
That will occur in your lifetime.
Now if it sounds like this is a doomsday scenario,
that was not my intention.
But to point out that we need
each and every one of you
to pursue a career in engineering
because somewhere out there among you
is the solution to each and every one
of the challenges we face today.
Now I hope that many of you will
take up the challenge
and become an engineer.
I can't imagine what the world
would be like without engineers.
And although biased,
I can't imagine
being in a more creative and rewarding profession
than being a professional engineer.
Now in closing,
I invite you to seek out either our website
or our Facebook page,
and I know everybody's on Facebook
because I'm on Facebook.
You can learn more about what it takes to become
a professional engineer by visiting
the NSPE website at NSPE.org
or look up our Facebook page
by searching for NSPE.
And as the President-Elect of NSPE,
my Facebook page is linked to the NSPE Facebook page,
and I'd be more than happy to answer any questions
that any of you have on the engineering profession
or to provide links on
opportunities for scholarships and
entering the engineering profession.
So, thank you very much.