April 10

Russ introduced the two guest speakers Dean of Engineering at UNI Barry Butler and the Dean of Engineering at ISU Mark Kushner. The name of their presentation was Rising Above the Storm Energizing and Employing America for a brighter future. They gave many startling facts and figures showing that the USA is no longer the leader in several areas of Engineering: USA was surpassed by China in 2004 in Communication Technology USA is 24th out of 40 countries in Math applications USA has 1; China has 50 --- billion dollar chemical plants under construction USA is the net Importer of high tech technology products. The United States on average has 15% of students graduate in the natural sciences or engineers to compare Singapore 67% and China 50%. They discussed that America needs to improve teaching our child K-12 in the field of Science and Mathematics education programs. The USA needs to make a commitment to long term basic research it takes 20 years for some inventions to happen. If some measures are not taken the USA will continue to be left behind and more of our jobs will be outsourced to other countries.