The large Continent of America has in its territory besides overseas regions, dependencies and colonies 35 sovereign countries, 25 in North America and 12 in South America. Among them there are two big countries Brazil, which official language is Portuguese and Argentina, which official language is Spanish. Both are of political and economical importance in South America. They both belong to the so called Iberian America, which is a term used since the second half of the 19th century to refer collectively to the countries in the Americas, which were formerly colonies of Spain or Portugal. The Iberian countries in Europe are Portugal, Spain, Andorra and Gibraltar. The objective of this paper is to present the history and he current status of engineering education in Iberian America countries Brazil and Argentina followed by the countries that originated the engineering education in these countries, Portugal and ...
Engineering plays an important role in this "brave new world" and it is in fact crucial for the development of science and technology. More importantly, it is responsible for the delivery of such technologies on the service of the betterment of humanity. Engineering must be aware of not only environmental but also social impacts of the outcomes of projects. Looking closer to the training of engineers, there is still a prevalence of good technical training without considering a broader knowledge achievement. This broader achievement is not a recent idea; the French School of Engineering implemented under Napoleon governance formed the "Mr. Engineer" that prepared leaders with high profile of technical knowledge. Even after the globalization phenomenon, with all the discussions about introducing humanistic courses in engineering programs, the results are humble. There is still a difficulty for engineers to address technology to solve social issues rather than to apply technology regardless social needs. The other point is that, currently, the design of a project for the "informed society" has to take the social as well as the environmental impacts into account. So the question is: how should the engineering school prepare the future engineer to perform in the new challenging social environment? If it is possible to suggest some actions, the key is to prepare the future engineers to learn how to work close to communities and governments, addressing the outcomes of the projects to solve sociotechnological problems. ...
Political environment is full of challenges and crises of deep consequences to society as well as to the environment and it has a strong incidence in terms of decision making in any field. It means that taking decisions is becoming more and more complex and difficult due to the fact that the implications are felt in a faster way and in a larger community. For engineers, the decision process is even more complex once the implications have serious impact not only to the target customers but also to the society as a whole and to the environment. This is an aspect that shows the necessity for engineers to search for the acquisition of an ability to respond to social necessities having in mind the cultural aspects when developing a project. The effects of this aspect in engineering education implies a different approach providing the future engineers with notions on policy, ethics and social sciences, which are so important to prepare them to the future work market that will require the respect and promotion of society and environment as assets [1]. Most of social groups have ambiguous understanding about science and technology; some understand it as responsible for the environmental deterioration and the voracious capitalism and others as the ones responsible for the better quality of life with the improvement of health systems, agricultural production and other accomplishments. Both perceptions are not far from the reality. In any case, the impacts can be seen along the history and more recently with the sophistication of the so called "information society". This particular "information society" shows how strong the impact of any technology introduced in society can be. Real time communication and brutal amount of information available have drastically changed how people relate, make business and study [2]. The proposal of COPEC - Science and Education Research Council for the next five years is the offering of an MBA by Distance Learning due to the new global education demand. The new programs will be delivered in ...
