July/August 2018

NSPE Today
Ready to Celebrate?

The third annual Professional Engineers Day will be celebrated on August 1, and NSPE is looking forward to building on the notable success and reach of the past years’ celebrations.

Designed to raise awareness and appreciation for the vital contributions of professional engineers, this day of celebration serves as a very visible opportunity to educate the public about the professional engineer’s importance. It’s also a day for companies and those who work with professional engineers to recognize and celebrate their employees and colleagues.

PE Day has grown with more NSPE members, partner organizations, engineering firms, engineering schools, and even the public celebrating the event each year. In 2017, the hashtag #LicensedPEDay was posted across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn more than 2,500 times with close to 1,000 photos and videos being shared across all platforms. In addition to the virtual presence, 16 official proclamations from city, county, and state governments were issued, and NSPE noted several in-person celebratory events occurring across the country.

For 2018, the biggest component of PE Day will still be virtual in nature, with participants encouraged to post the hashtag #LicensedPEDay as the rally point on social media, be it photos on Twitter or Instagram, posts on Facebook and LinkedIn, or even videos on YouTube. Here are some of the ways to get involved in this year’s celebration:

• Download and share our graphics toolkit of PE Day logos for use on social media, websites, advertisements, and newsletters.
• Capture and share a video of the “day in the life” of a PE, showcasing all the different projects and work PEs do. Videos will be compiled and shared on August 1. Contact Stacey Ober, [email protected], to discuss logistics on submitting and sharing videos.
• Showcase PE pride on Facebook with the PE Day Facebook profile frame.
• Generate official recognition from state and local governments by downloading the template for PE Day proclamations.
• Encourage other engineering organizations to recognize and promote PE Day.

PE Day was created to recognize licensed professional engineers apart from National Engineers Week and the US Science and Engineering Festival, which focus on the profession at large. PE Day is celebrated the first Wednesday of August to coincide with the awarding of the first professional engineering license, which was issued to Charles Bellamy in Wyoming in August 1907.