ECPD should look ahead: A report to the boards of the constituent bodies by the chairman of the council

Irrespective of the extremities of individual opinions about it, Engineers' Council for Professional Development admittedly occupies a position of strategic potentialities in the very broad field of engineering endeavors. Because of the magnitude and the magnificence of its accomplishment in the surveying and accrediting of engineering curricula throughout the United States, ECPD is all too widely thought of as being primarily an accrediting agency. Quite to the contrary, as Doctor Doherty here points out, ECPD provides a channel for the effective coordination of engineering efforts in many directions of public as well as professional significance. AIEE President Sorensen also comments on this topic in his message to the Institute's membership that appears elsewhere in this issue. THE engineering profession faces a great challenge and opportunity. It faces the imperative challenge of the unstable new world it has helped to create, and the opportunity to take a hand in stabilizing that world. But if it plans to meet this clear obligation and assume such a role in the life of the country, it should look ahead, measuring the implied responsibilities alongside its capacities for discharging them. Doing this, it would find one fundamental deficiency to be in the capacity for joint action, and another in the character and extent of the engineer's preparation. It is my conviction that these deficiencies are vital and that concerted thought must be given to their correction; otherwise the profession will probably receive and justly deserve the unhappy distinction of having let its next generation down and failed in its national mission.