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Round-up: About that Bus Full of Lawyers...

Eric Iversen

Jim Fischer, used by permission

This week we read a lot about International Women’s Day, Sunday, March 8. The theme this year was, “Make It Happen.” In our first item, four women who made it happen all the way to Internet Society Hall of Fame discuss how to improve the climate for women in technical fields. For better or worse, the US News graduate school rankings are out, and some usual suspects top the engineering list. And graduate enrollment data show engineering blowing the doors off law school over the last ten years. It turns out that job opportunities and good pay in other fields are what was needed, not a bus full of JD’s going over a cliff.

Radia Perlman, Internet Hall of Fame member. Scientist 100, used by permission

School ranking season is upon us. US News leads the way, of course. Elsewhere, math lessons fail Common Core standards, and graduate engineering enrollments are surging.

On the workplace beat, lots of attention goes to programs leading people to tech jobs.

In the food-for-thought category, some of the smartest people in K-12 engineering reflect here on the natural fit between children’s natural impulses to build (and then break) things and the habits of mind that go into engineering work. It’s an older piece, but it holds up. Christine Cunningham from Engineering is Elementary, Leigh Abts of the University of Maryland, and others chime in.

What caught your eye this week? How do these items strike you? We welcome your thoughts and invite you to pass along this set of items to friends in the field who might be interested.


Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. He has written and spoken widely on engineering education in the K-12 arena. You can write to him about this topic, especially when he gets stuff wrong, at eiversen@start-engineering.com

You can also follow along on Twitter @StartEngNow.

And don’t forget to take a look at our popular K-12 engineering outreach books, Start Engineering, and Dream, Invent, Create.