Society as a stakeholder of mechanical engineering education

What is of critical interest in regard to this competency is that a lack of systems competency produces consequences that may be catastrophic, long term, and irreparable. The costs of systems competency gaps are staggering when the impacts of this type of dysfunction in engineering practice are calculated. In some cases, the losses are explicit, but in other cases, the losses are oblique. A simple cost-benefit analysis of a handful of disasters caused by a lack of systems competency is impetus enough to attack this problem and make the investment needed to foster its development. 

These concerns by society for sustainability competency are identified within the Global Challenges set out by the Millennium Development Project (http //www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challeng.html) in 2011. In fact. Sustainable Development and Climate Change is the most highly ranked problem facing humanity today while a 2003 report by the US National Council for Science and the Environment noted that baseline information about the status of sustainability education and practice in any nation is largely absent. 

The generally accepted DPSIR framework above is used to define the linkages among the activities of man in society and their effects in the environment. Driving forces are the socio-economic and socio-cultural forces driving human activities, which increase or mitigate pressures on the environment. Pressures are the stresses that human activities place on the environment. State , or state of the environment, is the condition 

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The points of improvement, derived from the data sets in this chapter along with the scenario work in Chapter One, provide guidance to the academy in terms of where gaps exist. This is a substantial point because there is much that is working well in mechanical engineering education and the entire system does not need to be, nor should it be, totally 

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