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Tricia Hatley was the 2020-2021 National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) President. She served on numerous committees within the organization. She also is a past President of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers. She’s served in numerous leadership roles and is now an Oklahoma Society of Professional Engineers member.
Additionally, she is a Principal and Vice President at Freese and Nichols, Inc (FNI), an engineering, architectural, and environmental firm with offices throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina. She has been with FNI for 29 years; before that, she worked at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
Karen Horting is the Executive Director and CEO for the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), a position she’s held since 2014. As Deputy Executive Director, Horting oversaw the Society’s professional development, K-12 outreach, annual conference, and international expansion.
Before joining SWE, Horting worked for both the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She currently serves on the Leadership Circle of the 50K Coalition, the FIRST Robotics Board of Directors, the Automation Federation Board of Directors, the STEM Ed Coalition Board of Directors, and the Association Forum CAE Working Group.
Please note that Hatley and Horting were interviewed in 2021.
NSPE founded Engineers Week 70 years ago to call attention to the contributions engineers make to society. Today, those contributions are as important as they’ve ever been. Modern engineers’ work helps protect our communities’ public health, safety, and welfare.
“The role of the engineer is to solve the problems facing society,” says Tricia Hatley, PE, FNSPE, President of NSPE. “With the many challenges in our world today, the work of engineers is vitally important.”
Engineers will continue to develop new and better technologies to meet society’s needs. But as the speed of innovation and implementation increases, it mustn’t come at the cost of public health, safety, or welfare. In the future, ethical development and testing of new technologies is a top priority for today’s professional engineers.
“NSPE has multiple committees and task forces looking at emerging technology challenges from different perspectives and dealing with specific technologies and issues,” Hatley says. “We have produced policy guide documents that we are using to communicate with legislators and policymakers about the importance of ethically developing, testing, and deploying these technologies in a way that protects the public.”
Surviving, mitigating, and reversing the effects of climate change will require a radical commitment to ethical and sustainable development. In 2006, NSPE added a new professional obligation to its Code of Ethics, stating that engineers should adhere to the principles of sustainable development to protect the environment for future generations.
“Engineers will play a key role in addressing the issue of climate change, be it working to reduce the contributing effects or to mitigate the repercussions of a changing climate on our infrastructure and natural resources,” Hatley says.
The world needs more engineers. In the US, roughly 18,760 engineers will turn 69 every year for the next 15 years. This reflects a broader trend: America’s senior population is expected to nearly double over the next three decades. And it’s not just the population that’s aging, it’s the nation’s infrastructure, too.
“NSPE is addressing these separately, but equally as vigorously,” Hatley says. “With our public policy and advocacy work, we are pushing for more infrastructure funding and educating lawmakers and regulators on the importance of the professional engineer in updating and modernizing key infrastructure mechanisms such as gas pipelines. And NSPE has recently renewed its efforts to engage younger engineering professionals through our Emerging Leaders Program—an intensive seven-month experience for promising early-career professionals who are just beginning to lead and think strategically in the profession and their careers.”
Recruiting the next generation of engineers requires innovation, too. Historically, the engineering workforce has been overwhelmingly white and male, but meeting the challenges of the modern world will require engineers of all different backgrounds. NSPE and organizations such as the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) are fighting to make tomorrow’s engineering workforce more diverse, inclusive, and representative of the society it works to benefit.
“My hope is that the future includes a more diverse group of individuals who find ways to leverage their engineering education to improve our society,” Hatley says. “Engineers of the future will know how their work makes our world a better place, and students in grade school will aspire to be an engineering hero.”
Innovation comes from fresh perspectives that find new connections. That requires a diverse range of minds with various perspectives and experiences. Unfortunately, engineering is still a largely homogeneous field. Women make up 17.4 percent of the engineering workforce in America, and people of color only comprise 23 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022).
“When you look at the number of jobs in engineering and technology, many of our employer partners have more jobs than they can fill,” says Karen Horting, CEO for the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). “If we’re going to have a workforce that can meet those demands, if we’re going to stay a leader when it comes to innovation and technology, we’re going to need to bring more diverse people into the engineering pipeline.”
Historically, women have been overlooked for (and even actively discouraged from pursuing) engineering educations and careers. Fortunately, some persisted anyway: Hedy Lamarr’s encryption work laid the groundwork for wireless communication; Margaret Hamilton oversaw the software development that put humans on the Moon. What world-shaking innovations might future female engineers uncover, if given the chance to do so?
“We’re facing a lot of big problems,” says Horting. “But when we bring diverse people together, we’re able to come up with solutions really quickly. If you look at what the National Academy of Engineering has as their Grand Challenges for Engineering—things like clean water, food security, cybersecurity—there’s no way we’re going to solve them if we don’t have diverse perspectives, diverse backgrounds, and diverse education pathways.”
According to a 2014 study by the American Psychological Association, as many as 40 percent of the women who earn undergraduate degrees in engineering leave the field early, or never enter it at all, due to the longstanding male hegemonies in place. What possible advancements has engineering lost as a result? To fight back, SWE works with employers and academic institutions to interrupt the unconscious biases that make it difficult for women to advance in engineering roles.
“When the demand for engineers is so high, why would we be doing things that don’t include everyone?” Horting asks.
Engineering’s racial demographics aren’t any more encouraging: only 5.8 percent of the engineering workforce is Black. This lack of diversity represents a significant loss of opportunity and a very real danger. With an unequal engineering workforce, it’s too easy for bias to inadvertently permeate through the algorithms and technology that the workforce designs. In imagining tomorrow, engineering must look inward and design away some of the past generation’s flaws.
To that end, SWE works alongside NSPE, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and other organizations to bring about a more equitable future for engineering. Together, they’re part of the 50K Coalition, which aims to have 50,000 diverse engineering graduates by 2025.
“I don’t know of any career that has as much of a positive impact on the world as engineering,” Horting says. “We really need to tap into every community and say engineering is a great career, and you can do it, too.”
A core tenet of Engineers Week is to raise awareness around the wonders of engineering. You can help accomplish that by sharing photos, text, or stories about engineering projects you work on or admire. Tag your posts with #Eweek2023 and @DiscoverEorg to connect with others.
Hosted by DiscoverE, Girl Day is a worldwide campaign to engage girls in engineering. It’s a day where engineers and educators step up to act as role models who can educate girls about how engineers change the world. This year’s Girl Day occurs during Engineers Week, on February 23, 2023.
Engineering’s biggest accomplishments have come from team-based approaches. To get involved with some of the best teams out there, and to find out what tomorrow looks like for them, check out the organizations below.
Matt Zbrog is a writer and researcher from Southern California. Since 2018, he’s written extensively about a wide range of engineering disciplines, with a particular focus on the potential impacts of major technological breakthroughs. His work largely centers around conversations with engineering faculty at top universities, highlighting their research in areas such as nuclear power, artificial intelligence, soft robotics, and semiconductor design. He’s also worked with leaders and subject matter experts at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
This is a role for tech-lovers, for logical thinkers, for those who like being given an answer and then are told to find the question. But it’s also a role for communicators, for relationship builders, for people who enjoy cross-departmental collaboration.
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