During My Term Education Report

William Hughes, 2006–2008 ASPE Vice President, Education

First, I would like to thank the delegates at the 2006 Convention for their continued support in electing me vice president, education. I look forward to serving the Society and the membership for the next two years.

The first and most important goal that I, along with the Education Committee, will be addressing is the continued development of high-quality PowerPoint presentations. These presentations are critical to the education of our membership and are to be used as additional tools by all chapters to help them educate their members. The Education Committee will be working on a CPD review presentation to help increase participation in the program. I would like to request from you any additional topics that the Society should be working on to suit your needs or areas of interest. The use of these presentations will increase as they are developed. They will become part of the Society’s online continuing education program. ASPE currently has one presentation online on Fuel Gas, which is currently being used to obtain continuing education units (CEUs) by those individuals who are not able to attend local chapter meetings, Conventions, and Symposia.

As vice president, membership, over the past four years I noticed a steady increase in professional engineers applying for membership. I believe the reason for this increase is the requirement for CEUs by professional engineering organizations in several states. This is just another reason why we need to keep producing quality educational materials.

I will be working with the Technical Symposium chair along with the Education Committee on the development of educational programs for the Technical Symposium in Atlanta next year. This process will be repeated again with the co-chairs for the Convention in Long Beach, Calif., in October 2008.

The University of Wisconsin and the educational program on fluid dynamics designed for plumbing engineering students offered in the 2007 fall semester. With the development of this program, the Society will need to review the process of our educational programs and how they relate to the CPD program and other Society programs.

The need to educate the public about ASPE—who we are and what we are about—needs to be addressed. We are engineers, not plumbers, and this message must get out. The development of a program to accomplish this is another item that I will be working on along with the Education Committee.

Another ongoing project will be the continued updating of the speakers list from chapter reports, the 2006 Convention list of speakers and the list of 2007 Symposium speakers. All this is put together to assist the chapters is producing quality educational programs.

As you can see, a lot needs to be accomplished in education over the next two years, and I urge anyone who wants to be part of the Education Committee to give me a call. We can use all the help. This is your Society, and the work of many can help produce quality programs faster.

If there is anything you feel we are not addressing to suit your concerns or educational needs, please feel free to contact me. I, along with the rest of the board, am here to serve you.