Twitter Chat: Engineers as Positive Impact Makers 10/2/2013

Guest Post by Guest Host Leonardo Fernandes

Read the Summary of the chat here.

It’s easy to define the stereotype of an engineer. Some people say that engineers are simply the opposite of the Arts, Humanities and Social professions: they are close-minded, don’t know how to deal with people as well as they deal with machines and they don’t care for what neither whom is around them. For engineering students, it’s usual to hear this stereotype, but do they believe and internalize it? Is our engineering education intensifying or breaking down that stereotype?

We daily face big and complex challenges from industrial, environmental, organizational and social sectors. Is our education, focusing on problem solving with known data and simple equation application, still aligned to the demands from our time?

Through engineering, we can transform engineers into positive impact makers. Besides graduating just a worker that can design equipment and follow up process in industries, engineering can give the tools, skills and mindset to form a whole new engineer. This engineer is socially aware, applies science to innovate in solutions for major social challenges and assumes a critical role in organizations to make positive impact.

The increasing number of students getting involved in initiatives that bring the changes needed points out a potential to break down that stereotype. This week we will be discussing the relation between social matters and engineering education to transform engineers into positive impact makers.

Join us on October 2, 2013 at 8 PM EST for a twitter chat. Follow along using #BigBeacon.
Students, educators, engineers, and all interested in engineering education are welcome. 

About our guest host

Leonardo Fernandes is a Chemical Engineer from Brazil. During the engineering course, he got involved in the Junior Enterprise Movement, worked in scientific researches and had done internships in big companies. After graduation, he elaborated and ministered a discipline of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Management at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He is founding the Engineers Without Borders chapter in his town. He is co-founder of Empower, an innovation academy that transforms classes into a laboratory to solve great challenges. By this initiative, they empower students to solve complex challenges based on human centered design, creating a model that suits best the 21st century needs for education.

About Big Beacon

The Big Beacon is a Movement to Transform Engineering Education. An Illinois not-for-profit corporation, Big Beacon was organized to catalyze a global social movement to transform engineering education. The Big Beacon connects dots among individuals and organizations to collaboratively disrupt the status quo, thereby bringing about change to align engineering education (and by association K-12 STEM education) with the creativity imperative of our times. Read the Big Beacon Manifesto at http://bigbeacon.org.

How to Twitter Chat

If you’ve never Twitter chatted before, don’t worry; it’s very easy.  First, get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, and log in. At 8 PM ET on Wednesday, September 11, 2013, go to twitter.com and type #BigBeacon into the search box on Twitter. Thereafter all the tweets with the hashtag #BigBeacon will show up on your Twitter page. To participate, simply express your opinion by sending a tweet, and be sure to append the hashtag #BigBeacon so other members of the Twitter Chat see you are posting.