Is Your Engineering Program Aligned with the Right Partners?

EngineeringCAS™ helps programs build classes that better reflect society

Norman Fortenberry, executive director of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), believes that the engineering profession’s top priority should be retention. A shortage of diversity in the engineering workforce, against the backdrop of today’s increasingly diverse American society at-large, represents another significant concern for the profession.

Fortenberry underscores the engineering field’s practical and powerful impact on society as the calling card which will help academic institutions, and ultimately the profession as a whole, attract the best and brightest minds.

Looking for relevance

“The quality of human life is directly tied to engineering,” he said. “If you look at everything that is not growing on a tree — and even some things that are growing on trees — they’re the result of engineering. We need to communicate that message to potential students better. Demographics are telling us that’s particularly important for women and underrepresented minorities, but many white males are looking for relevance in what they do as well. We have to explain the human relevance of engineering as a profession if we are to attract and retain more students.”

Further, in today’s increasingly global economy, Fortenberry stresses the importance of communication across cultures, boundaries and borders.

“We’re working on projects now where design drawings begin in Singapore; then the drawings travel to Japan, then the United States and then production starts in Germany, so being on the same page about what’s happening every step of the way is crucial,” he said. EngineeringCAS is responding to the contemporary imperative to embrace diversity and multiculturalism by working with underrepresented minority groups, ensuring that Liaison’s CAS solution substantively solves some of the engineering field’s most pressing problems.

Partnerships create strength

Along these lines, EngineeringCAS^TM (the first and only Centralized Application Service^TM for graduate engineering) partners with organizations which represent the needs and perspectives of a diverse applicant pool — including but not limited to:

• Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN)
• The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
• The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE)
• The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
• ASEE

Overall, Liaison has developed customized services with over 30 professional associations, streamlining admissions for a wide range of disciplines and fields.

Darrin Drollinger, executive director of ASABE, said EngineeringCAS is “a tremendous opportunity to highlight graduate-level agricultural and biological engineering programs across the nation. Being a part of this effort from the start was important to us, and we’re thrilled with how it simplifies the application process.”

A multifaceted solution

EngineeringCAS offers engineering programs big-picture reporting capabilities through access to previously scattered information in a unified view; help programs raise awareness among an international applicant pool by adding their programs to a global platform; introduces a streamlined process that substantially cuts down on application review time and leverages partnerships that maximize diversity.

For applicants, the benefit is clear: EngineeringCAS facilitates their process for researching and applying to multiple programs of interest, offers a modern application experience that guides them through the application process and provides 24/7 access to real-time application status updates.

And for academic programs, EngineeringCAS is a risk-free proposition. The service is available at no cost to the programs themselves. This is the platform which will help you reach your enrollment goals, provide a better applicant experience, streamline your admissions process and build a better class. This is your vehicle for reengineering your admissions process to meet the shifting needs of your institution, and of the engineering field as a whole. Extend your reach to a broader applicant pool today with EngineeringCAS.

Learn more at EngineeringCAS.org.