Ben Matthews

Featured Guest Blogger: Ben Matthews, P.E.

Ben Matthews is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas and a distinguished graduate from the U.S. Air Force Academy where he also played football.  Ben completed his Master’s degree in Construction Management at the University of Texas at Austin while serving on active duty.  He met his wife at UT and they now have 2 young children.  Since separating from the Air Force in June 2007, Ben has been working in the private sector.  An active networker, he currently serves on the SAME National Board of Direction as the College Outreach chair.  Ben works for Freese and Nichols in Fort Worth, TX as a Program Manager for federal clients providing asset management/infrastructure engineering solutions.  You can link to Ben on Linkedin or email him at samecollegeoutreach@gmail.com.  Ben will be a guest on our Radio Show on October 4th at 12 pm EST to discuss the topic of mentoring.

Did you know China is currently producing 392,000 engineers per year? While that number is less than 1% of their total population it still is 6 times as many engineers as the United States produces each year.  To make matters even more challenging, of the 60,000 engineers that are educated in the United States annually, almost half return to their native countries.

As we begin the 2010-2011 academic school year, what are you doing to make sure we have enough engineers to support our nation’s future infrastructure needs?  Some of you might be able to say, “I played in the ASCE golf tournament this summer, which provides scholarships to aspiring engineer students.”  While this type of financial support is definitely appreciated, aspiring engineers really want to know what engineering is about in a non-academic sense.

I ask that each of you reading this article take the time throughout this school year to have a conversation with a student about engineering.  It doesn’t matter if they are in 3rd grade or in college.  Tell them about what you do, tell them about the types of projects that you have worked on, or show them how engineering and the built environment is all around them.  By doing this, you are mentoring future generations. [Read more...]