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CES Annual Meeting Features Presentation from Tri-C's New Dean of Engineering

6/4/2010

Cuyahoga Community College’s New Dean of Engineering & Technology Shares His Views on Preparing for Ohio’s High-Tech Future at the Cleveland Engineering Society’s Annual Meeting on June 4

The Cleveland Engineering Society (CES) will celebrate 130 years of service to the engineering and technical community at its Annual Meeting & Celebration on Friday, June 4, 2010 at the Doubletree Hotel Downtown Cleveland. The Program will include new board member inductions; presentation of the CES Annual Leadership Award and scholarships to two local high school students pursuing studies in engineering. The program will also include a presentation from Dhirendra Damji, Cuyahoga Community College’s Associate Dean of Engineering and Engineering Technology sharing his views on Preparing for Ohio’s High Tech Future.

Is Ohio prepared for the challenges that new technologies and changing transportation and Energy industries will present? Are we training our future engineers to meet the demands that smart grid, hybrid technology, fuel cells and alternative energies will bring to our future workforce? What about the critical thinking that will be required to keep pace in an ever changing and competitive marketplace?

Damji argues that Ohio is ill prepared and will find its manufacturing base falling into near obsolescence, through economic and creative destruction (Schumpeter et al) without drastic reform to the educational model.
“Currently, Ohio’s core competencies lie heavily in servicing the drive train industry, at an alarming 70 to 80 percent,” he says. “As hybrid and electric vehicles begin to dominate the market over the next 10 to 20 year, with significantly lower parasitic losses through smarter transmission & regenerative systems, we’ll need smarter, well-trained and versatile engineering intellectual capital to respond and adapt in order to stay globally competitive.”
Damji offers a refreshingly unique perspective to the problem; joining academia following a long and distinguished career in the corporate world. He’ll discuss the reform needed at all levels of our educational system and will share plans for a dramatic overhaul of the engineering program at Cuyahoga Community College.

Founded in 1880, the Cleveland Engineering Society is a non-profit professional membership organization with more than 500 members from the public and private sector representing various engineering and technical disciplines. CES unites Northeast Ohio’s engineers and technical professionals to share experiences and explore new technologies, business strategies, trends and issues in various industries. For more information about CES or the Annual Meeting visit the CES website at www.cesnet.org/events.asp.

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