March/April 2018

The Community Engineer

Professional engineers can provide valuable technical leadership beyond the workplace. From serving on local commissions to running for office, opportunities abound.

BY EVA KAPLAN-LEISERSON

Professional engineers, in performing their job responsibilities, are obligated to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. But outside of their day-to-day work, they also can provide valuable leadership on engineering and technical matters.

Vigorous discussion on this topic arose in two threads in the Open Forum of NSPE’s Communities, “Community Involvement by Engineers” and “Citizen Engineer.” While participants agreed that engineers and PEs have valuable technical expertise to offer local commissions, boards, and advisory councils—as well as political figures—opinions varied about the extent to which they should become involved with politics themselves.

‘To Engage, to Communicate, and to Lead’

In his Communities thread, NSPE Past President Tim Austin, P.E., F.NSPE, stressed the necessity for professional engineers to be “engaged in shaping our world.” He cited the 2010 book Citizen Engineer: A Handbook for Socially Responsible Engineering, by David Douglas and Greg Papadopoulos, in which the authors discussed the need for engineers to provide their technical expertise to the public.

“The increasing complexity of products leads to greater dependence upon engineering,” they wrote, “yet most people don’t understand engineering or the underlying sciences and technologies.” That can be not only frightening to the public, they continued, but also lead to bad public policy and misconceptions that impede innovation. “There is a pressing need for engineers to become more proactive with society—to engage, to communicate, and to lead.”

The authors believe we live in the age of the Citizen Engineer. As they defined the term in a 2009 PE magazine article, “Citizen engineers are techno-responsible, environmentally responsible, economically responsible, and socially responsible participants in the engineering community.”

Rather than being passive problem solvers, they added, “they are speaking out on issues within their realm of expertise and engaged in the political process. They’re staying abreast of issues that impact their field and are helping to educate others who may be impacted by developments.”

Citizen engineers don’t just need to know more, they emphasized. They need to be more. “They need to play multiple roles, possess broad knowledge in a variety of disciplines, and participate more broadly in education and public policy.”

In his Communities post, Austin noted that change is coming quickly. Licensed engineers can either “be part of that change to help shape the outcome or face the prospect of obscurity and irrelevance,” he said. “That choice is ours.”

Into Society

As NSPE member Neil Yeoman, P.E., believes, information can move between engineers and society in two different directions.

One direction, he explained in the Communities discussion, brings the “needs and realities of society into the profession.” This is important. But equally so is bringing the “skills and understandings of the engineer into society.” PEs have an important role to play in ensuring social, economic, and political decisions are driven by technological reality, Yeoman says, particularly because not enough people are comfortable with scientific and technical topics.

Engineers can help simplify concepts, Yeoman explains. For instance, he gives lectures at libraries and schools on climate change. According to the PE, he is able to take what can be a complex and controversial subject and explain it in a way that is more easily understood by nontechnical people.

Yeoman has also provided technical expertise to various organizations he’s involved with, such as his local civic association and the town’s solid waste advisory committee. He can keep others from having to do as much independent research, he says, and his PE license provides credibility.

And Austin highlights a number of ways that members of the Wichita chapter of the Kansas Society of Professional Engineers have been involved with the community, from helping to develop an innovative storm water regulation (See Jan/Feb 2017 PE) to scheduling regular meetings with local elected officials.

What’s the most effective way to get involved? “All of them,” he says. “We have to be visible and present in many areas.” That can mean one-on-one phone calls, involvement in political campaigns, serving on community boards, and more.

Varied Contributions

Ken Lee, P.E., F.NSPE, is one of the professional engineers who has been speaking regularly with a Wichita official. Four or five members of the Wichita chapter of the Kansas Society of Professional Engineers meet with city council member James Clendenin on the third Friday of every month.

The meetings allow both sides to get feedback from each other, Lee says. Clendenin can use the group as a sounding board for issues he’s dealing with, such as infrastructure funding, transit options, or proposed development. In addition, the PEs bring up issues that are important to the engineering or development community or to the public health, safety, and welfare.

The meetings have allowed the engineers to clear up misconceptions, Lee explains, which may have influenced a decision.

“We appreciate the opportunity to give James a different perspective outside of the normal echo chamber that he hears when he is at city hall or talking to other citizens,” Lee says. And due to the relationships that the chapter members have established, when they reach out, “he immediately trusts and respects our feedback since it comes from someone he really knows as opposed to someone who calls just when they want something.”

Carlos Gittens, P.E., F.NSPE, also meets regularly with his elected officials in South Carolina, during the off-season. Each year he tries to meet state legislators one-on-one to offer his assistance and discuss issues of importance to the engineering community.

Gittens highlights engineers’ problem-solving abilities, which can also help them serve as a general resource. Although they might be called on for expert testimony in court cases, engineers aren’t often turned to for guidance in other ways, he says. But he believes they have a “higher calling” and should be leaned on in a variety of ways.

To Politic or Not to Politic

In Citizen Engineer, Douglas and Papadopoulos  list areas of expertise citizen engineers need: technology, ecology, intellectual property, business, and public policy. They highlight the need for engineers to educate policy decision makers about technology, while at the same time educating themselves about how policymaking works. “It is our duty to make the effort to have the dialog with our communities,” they write, “not the other way around.”

This level of political involvement, some believe, is the most engineers should take on. Yeoman, who sees “tremendous dishonesty” in the political system, stresses that engineers should be seen as acting with competence above “petty politics.”

Political parties have their own agendas, he says, and any direct involvement that engineers have may damage their credibility. “Credibility is an engineer’s most important currency when dealing with the public,” he emphasizes.

But others disagree. Pamela Quillin, P.E., an NSPE member in Erie, Colorado, ran for and won election as a delegate to her county convention. She is also considering a future run for a town council position.

As she explained in the Communities Open Forum, she had taken other steps as a citizen, such as writing letters, but she now believes involvement in local, state, or federal politics is necessary to have any real influence.

Doctors, lawyers, and business leaders run for public office and get elected, Quillin notes. Engineers need to participate as well. “I just can’t imagine that we wouldn’t get involved, with the attacks on licensure and misconceptions about fundamental problems around society today,” she says.

Some skills engineers possess are both applicable to political life and somewhat rare, she says, such as the ability to distill a complex set of circumstances into a defined problem and generate solutions.

How to begin? “We have to start taking that first plunge,” she says. “Don’t put your toes in the water. Just jump right in and get started with it.”

A Perfect Match

That’s exactly what Pat Goodwin, P.E., is doing. The former Terre Haute, Indiana, city engineer is running for mayor, with a focus on bringing financial stability, transparency, and efficiency to the city.

Goodwin’s motivation is to give back to the community he’s lived in his whole life.

In announcing his candidacy as an independent in the 2019 election, Goodwin emphasized his technical achievements, knowledge of local government, and leadership skills. He also highlighted his integrity and ethics, citing the NSPE Code of Ethics and his duty to hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public.

The PE disagrees strongly with the argument that getting involved in politics may damage engineers’ credibility. “Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians had credibility?” he says. “What better way to try to improve the credibility of elected officials than to have people of integrity holding those positions.”

A civil engineer by training, Goodwin highlights how challenges such as the underfunding of infrastructure put the public at risk. Engineers in elected positions can help ensure improvements, he says.

And there is already a lot of overlap between what engineers and elected officials do, Goodwin points out. For instance, decisions about paving the street or maintaining sewer pipes all relate to prioritizing the public safety, health, and welfare. “Really it is a perfect match.”

In addition, engineers’ logical and analytical capabilities allow them to make good long-term decisions and help them potentially govern well, Goodwin says.

Although he understands that engineers may see the political process as “messy and dirty,” he wishes more would say, “I gotta get involved in this if we’re ever going to get it fixed.”

The Public Eye

Whether PEs choose to get involved with politics or work in a more advisory capacity on boards or commissions, the engineering mindset can provide value. And the result can be an improved public perception.

As Carlos Gittens points out, engineers are often introverted and work behind the scenes—“we don’t necessarily get out there and advertise our name on the side of the bridge when work is going on.”

But both Gittens and Yeoman emphasize that engineers who share their skills and expertise with the public may help raise the awareness of what they can offer to a citizenry who may previously not have had a good understanding of the profession. The more visible engineers are, Gittens says, the more the public understands that engineers “really seem to know a lot about what’s going on.”

As Gittens says, “whether it’s joining your local chamber, a planning commission, a technical advisory panel, and yes, even running for an elected office such as county commissioner, we each must find a way to give back and share our skills with society.” He adds, “We can all make a difference locally by just getting involved in small ways.”

Goodwin emphasizes that while not all PEs have to run for office, they do have a responsibility to use their expertise to improve the world. “These positions of leadership exist in this world and if we don’t fill them, someone else will.”

Read more about PEs in public office.