Abstract :
It is argued that the engineering profession has not yet succeeded in divesting itself of a public image which showed the typical engineer as attired in knee boots and corduroys, looking through a transit. Engineers have not informed the high schools of the challenges inherent in the new science-based and mathematically based engineering programs at many of our colleges. They have not told the high schools that an engineer will, today, work more with his head than with his hands, that ideas are his products, and that his constant companion will be an electronic computer, not a handbook. This is why engineers must present their best representatives as salesmen, to work on an equal footing with the salesmen for the other professions - the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists - who appeal for the same high level of intelligence required by engineering. Somehow, engineers must convince the high-IQ student that engineers are mathematical, are of highest intellect, that they have opportunities to solve problems - that engineering encompasses a very broad field from the engineering of the civil consultant on one side to the engineering-science-research interface on the other - and that no single voice yet serves as spokesman for the engineering profession as a whole.
