Welcome Message
The 12th World Conference on Continuing Engineering Education continues more than two decades of global dialog and action regarding the professional development of engineers. In today’s economic and global world, the need for engineers to have creative and innovative solutions which are driven by short and long term cost/financing as well as demonstrates quality and sensitivity to societal concerns presents great cause for our gathering. This conference, in juxtaposition with four other engineering education professional organizations, demonstrates the roles of engineering education from the early formative years of schooling, through university settings and into a career long pursuit of knowledge. Our setting provides us with opportunities to build connections for an engineer’s career, allowing our profession to be global and sensitive to not only the technical issues we must solve, but also to the cultural, economic and sustainable contexts where our solutions will live.
Our focus on “Education without Borders” allows the global conversation and collective input of all engineers, focusingon solutions for sustainable energy and clean drinking water for the world’s citizens. At the closing of the week’s activities, all five organizations will come together to issue a declaration on engineering education; not just a statement, but a collective call to action. I encourage each of you to meet new colleagues, to discuss the challenges we are all facing and carry the outcomes of our conference to all parts of the world. Your actions will be part of the focus for the 13th WCCEE to be held in May 2012 in Valencia Spain.
Working together we can and will make a difference.
Nelson C. Baker, Ph.D.
Vice Provost, Distance Learning & Professional Education at the Georgia Institute of Technology
President, International Association for Continuing Engineering Education
