EWeek—Celebrate Awesome
From Rick McMaster
 EWeek or Engineers Week has been around for over 60 years — its first celebration of engineers and their  contributions to society was in 1951. In 1990, EWeek introduced a new program called Discover “E” supported by a variety of companies and professional societies. Its goal was to get engineers and other technical professionals into K-12 classrooms to encourage students in their studies of math and science through hands-on engineering activities. Stephen Bechtel, Jr. of the Bechtel Group, Inc. was the chair in 1990 with ASHRAE as the honorary chair. I first got involved in EWeek when Mr. Bechtel approached Jack Kuehler, then president of IBM, about supporting this new effort. Mr. Kuehler went on to serve as the chair of the program in 1992 with the ASME as the honorary chair.
 I moved to another position — and location — in IBM and drifted away from EWeek and Discover E for a few years until my manager approached me about being the local coordinator for both IBM and the greater Austin community. Only 3M and Texas Instruments were also involved in the local effort. At the time, my daughter was two and, with EWeek’s focus on getting females and underrepresented minorities into engineering, it was a perfect match. We’ve grown the local program, Central Texas Discover Engineering, to a year round effort supported by over 60 local businesses while EWeek grew from a national program to an international endeavor. After 16 years, I’m still deeply involved.
 If you haven’t participated in EWeek’s outreach as either an educator or volunteer, you should. During the  2011-2012 school year more than 55,000 engineers and other technical professionals visited over five million students worldwide. Full details are available in the annual report. This year the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, NCEES, and Lockheed Martin are co-chairing the program
The National Engineers Week Foundation has a wide portfolio of programs beyond just EWeek. Current programs include:
 While EWeek isn’t officially celebrated until February 17-23, 2013 — it’s always the week containing President George Washington’s Birthday since he is recognized as our nation’s first engineer — now is the time to start planning and growing the program in your own community. The foundation has partnered with Cyberchase, Design Squad Nation and Engineer Your Life providing a broad range of resources for both educators and volunteers in the classroom.
Discover E has my highest recommendation!
Next month STEM and more… a year in review.
As always, your comments are welcome, @drkold.
Rick McMaster is the STEM Advocate at IBM’s University Programs Worldwide.
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