BISMARCK – While North Dakota’s two top universities have had engineering programs for several years, a new engineering program is up-and-coming at the University of Mary in Bismarck.
Dr. Terry Pilling is the dean of the Hamm School of Engineering. He says engineering is much more than just a degree.
“Engineering is not really just a career, it’s actually a vocation,” he told The Flag’s Scott Hennen. “To be an engineer comes with a lot of responsibility. Unlike many careers, the gifts that God gave you as an engineer allow you to create new things and serve the society around you, and that means that the things that you can create can also be destructive, or they can be helpful to the world and to the community.”
Listen to Dr. Terry Pilling’s interview with The Flag’s Scott Hennen
Dr. Pilling said the University looks at being an engineer ‘as a calling to serve society.’
“That carries moral and ethical dimensions to it, because their errors can have profound consequences, and their choices (are) choices that may have little effect in many careers (or) have great effect if you’re an engineer,” he said.
The University of Mary’s engineering leaders ‘are needed actually everywhere,” Dr. Pilling said.
“I think they’re going to be needed even more incorporating the new advances in artificial intelligence and things like that into the workplace and to do it in an ethical way,” he said.
Dr. Pilling spoke specifically about the ethical ways the technology should be used.
“We would like our engineers to be in the conversation in designing the technology so that those companies that incorporate it can be profitable but also be ethical and help the community rather than send us on a downward spiral,” he said.
