The Environment Challenge for the Whole Engineer – May 28

Jeff Borisko, M.Sc., Director-Owner of Learning Lab of Polymath Productions, Inc. will be hosting this week’s Twitter Chat with Big Beacon. Our subject is: “The Environment Challenge for the Whole Engineer”.

Below is a post from Jeff Borisko our guest host:

I am not an engineer. There, it’s out. I feel better, you? I know my (pretend) concern is unwarranted with an initiative such as Big Beacon. Big Beacon is exactly what is needed for people like me that know and are family and friends with engineers, work with engineers, and hire them – including students. You might as well know I have a vision for future engineers totally in line with Big Beacon.

So who am I? Well, I have a couple degrees in science – environmental specifically – and have worked over 15 years. I currently live in North Bay, Ontario and have family and friend “hubs” in Montreal, Kingston, Ottawa, and Toronto. My career started where you might expect and over time exposed me to people and projects beyond environmental science. A key milestone was implementing and managing multi-discipline projects and (I think) interestingly – policy. Education has been a common thread.

Now, I wear two hats. The first is working for a Biomass Innovation Centre at Nipissing University where my main file is implementing technical/engineering curriculum at colleges and universities. My second (and favorite!) hat is running the Learning Lab – an education outreach, services, and program company focused on STEM. In short, I am an entrepreneur – educator!

This blog and future chat takes off from BigBeacon’s March 19th Twitter Chat with Dr. Leidy Klotz, where the theme was sustainability. Sustainability is a central objective where social, economic, and environment overlap to provide respective desired outcomes that maintain the whole. Sustainability provides a “ready to use” guide for now and the future. As recognized by Dr. Klotz, this includes the environment and is what I regard as the biggest part of the sustainability challenge.

Engineering education includes the environment – think civil engineering. Yet, it is predominantly treated as an external. The appearance of ecological engineering is promising.

Discussion Questions:

• What does the word environment mean to you?
• Where and how was the environment part of your engineering education?
• If not, where and how was the environment part of your life outside your education?
• How does the Whole Engineer meet the environmental challenges of the past? The present? the future?

On Wednesday, May 28th the BigBeacon Twitter Chat will focus on your education experience and how you see the environment fit with the Whole Engineer.

Join the #BigBeacon Team and follow Jeff at @learninglab_ygk on Wednesday, May 28th 8pm EST.

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 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. Alternatively, automate the hashtag search and append feature by using the free service Tchat at http://www.tchat.io.