Background

India has a lot of engineering colleges and engineering graduates. The job opportunities are not proportional to the number of people graduating from the various engineering streams each year. Most engineering colleges manufacture graduates as feedstock for MNCs mostly in the IT sector either as software professionals or sales representatives. Engineering lessons in most institutions are constrained to classrooms often with outdated curricula. After all, graduate manufacturing is a far more lucrative industry than engineering education.

Questions

I posed the following questions in one of the best engineering universities in Kerala, India, when I was invited to talk about the opportunities for students in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

  • Is the number of opportunities proportional to the number of engineers?
  • Do we get sufficient exposure? (industry, research, etc.)
  • For an institution with so many future engineers does enough engineering happen?
  • Is the way we learn effective? Does passion for engineering and science get passed on to the students?
  • Do we apply what we learn? (productivity, planning, sustainability, etc.)
  • Are we guaranteed a career? Do we have a future?

What did I do?

ASME offers plenty of local and global opportunities for students to get involved in engineering and research. In my final year of undergrad (2018), I was the Chairman of the ASME Student Chapter at my institute, the year before that I presented my project at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE 2017) in Tampa, Florida. I have spoken at various engineering institutes across Kerala about the benefits of taking part in ASME activities and volunteering in general. But what I am most proud of is what we accomplished in my undergrad institute.

We actively encouraged participation in different ASME competitions such as the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, Student Design Competition, Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D Challenge, etc. by starting individual esoteric clubs. This actively paved the way for many students to participate in these exciting engineering activities at various global venues. Building such a system also ensured the transfer of knowledge across subsequent batches of students. We also hosted various events at our institute including ASME’s regional EFx event in 2018. Our chapter even won a cash prize for the best student section in less than three years in 2016. At the end of my term as chairman, I organized a seminar on Gas Turbines via ASME Gas Turbines India chapter wherein 7 industry experts from GE, Rolls Royce, Siemens, etc. held sessions on various aspects of Gas turbines and aerospace engineering. These are intriguing mechanical engineering opportunities and our students got exposure to the aerospace industry.

That’s it, a couple of students fought for exposure and a venue to take part in engineering beyond the classrooms and we won, thanks to ASME.