Messaging for Engineering: From Research to Action

The National Academy of Engineering has released a report that supports efforts by the engineering community to communicate more effectively about the profession and those who practice it. The report builds on the 2008 NAE publication, Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering (CTC), which presented the results of a research-based effort to develop and test new, more effective messages about engineering.

The new messages cast engineering as inherently creative and concerned with human welfare, as well as an emotionally satisfying calling. The report summarizes progress in implementing the CTC messages, but also recognizes that there is potential to galvanize additional action and thus suggests specific steps for major players in the engineering community to continue and build on progress to date.

TRB is a division of the National Academies, which include the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council.