It's been a while since I've posted, mainly since despite my digging for information, I've been on this side of fruitless in my search. All of the articles that I've come across on the internet regarding issues with engineers and engineering have been actually about the challenges that engineers face, which is entirely different. Nothing so far on the PEO and their model of their self-governing organization, other than what their site and Wiki have to say.
For Fall 2010 I've been accepted into the CIVE497 course that will discuss engineering issues in politics, environment and society in order to improve our communication skills. I have to admit, though I'm not insatiably excited about the course, I feel sometimes like this course could have a lot to offer and that this experience (if all goes well) could shape the rest of my engineering career. During the course, I really wish to be able to challenge the reasoning behind the structure of the engineering government and to fully understand their processes that I don't understand at the moment. Since the course is new, flexible, and presented as a course that can be altered in terms of the direction of discussion according to the students, it seems like I could get my questions answered and possibly spark some interesting debate about the existentialism of the PEO. A kind of 'taking it down from the inside' I suppose.
I have to admit though, discussion of politics and environment as it pertains to engineering (more specifically civil and mechanical engineering) is quite interesting on its own. Even as a recent example, today in Waterloo there was an intense rainfall where between the times of 8:00 and 8:15, 20mm of rain fell and as of the previous night, a total of 65mm had fallen. Pictures circulated the internet of local flooded roads, water gushing out like geysers from storm sewers, and the boardwalk at Silver Lake in Waterloo Park being completely submerged. Projecting the 20mm in 15 min rainfall would mean that this storm was in excess of a 100 year storm, a design criteria I know well from work this term. I can see that at this given amount of rain, the storm system was over capacity and the sediment-laden waters would run off the land straight into the water ways without any sedimentation or filtration. This poses huge environmental impacts since more suspended solids has temperature and habitat effects. I wonder if there's any political impact of this storm, such as water damaged properties or city infrastructure.
It was interesting to hear from my friend yesterday as we were discussing something as small as the environmental impacts of hand-drying alternatives initiated by Conestoga Mall, she commented on my obvious enthousiasm and knowledge on the subject. Though I feel I know so little and never enough (since the world feels like a limitless source of information). She commented how it got her to stop and think about the alternatives of cloth towels to paper towels to hand dryers (since electricity and industrial cleaners are not directly observable to the user, it seems like they are preferred options to paper towels, though this can be debated either way. I like the idea of cloth towels since one is not likely to use more than one and it's way too easy to take more paper towels than you need, and electric hand dryers are very slow and ineffective in most cases).
Also, I'm looking into this whole Engineers Without Borders and how it works. Since my boyfriend came back from a vacation to Tanzania, he's had a new humbleness for all of the fantastic things in his life such as running water and the ability to buy lots of food on a whim and make a large tasty dinner. As a civil engineer, I see how my studies can be used in the context to directly improve the quality of life for people living in developing countries where the access to clean potable water and sanitation are well defined and separated. I've gotten the urge to want to help, but I feel somewhat skeptical of development organizations. The type of work that I'd be doing in the Waterloo chapter would be to drum up interest in other people in town, nothing directly correlated to helping those in need since only a few people and students are sponsored each year. To volunteer so much as to be considered an involved member of the group in order to be more likely to be chosen seems like something I just don't have the time to do. I'm thinking that working for a firm or a non-profit organization that does civil and structural engineering work for post-disaster relief aid would be really neat and a great application of my skills to the real, deserving world (harsh I know). I quickly looked into it and it looks like it possibly exists.
Anyways, more on this later when I have some time to research.
