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Global warming. Water quality. Renewable energy. Crumbling roads and falling bridges. The big issues of the day seem to get bigger by the next day, yet they are the kinds of problems engineers want to tackle.

A program at Iowa State University encourages engineering students to develop skills that will let them take on those issues from a policy-making platform.

The Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute was launched last fall with a $500,000 gift from James and Julie Balloun. James Balloun is a 1960 engineering graduate and a retired chief executive officer of Acuity Brands, a company that specializes in providing chemical products to the institutional, industrial and retail markets.

ISU Professor Ed Jaselskis directs the program and, along with engineering Dean Mark Kushner, he wants students to take the “2050 Challenge” by taking a leadership role in helping to solve these problems:

Clean water for 9 billion people;

Non-polluting energy sources;

Reversal of global warming trends;

Stable worldwide economies;

Universal access to information and health care; and

“Sustainable everything,” from agriculture to manufacturing.

“Now more than ever, we need more engineers helping to shape public policy. Our society is just coming to grips with many challenging issues that will affect us today and future generations,” Jaselskis will say in a speech to be delivered today (Feb. 18).

He demonstrates his point this way:

“I remember a story that one of my professors told me about a federally funded study on skiing accidents addressing the question of why leg bones typically fracture at a 45-degree angle. As we learned in our strength of materials class, when an object is subject to pure twisting, the maximum shear plane always occurs at 45 degrees. In a skiing accident, a skier’s leg usually twists before it breaks, and that’s why the fracture occurs at 45 degrees. Try this with a piece of chalk – it happens every time. This is a very basic engineering phenomenon, and had the policy-makers known this, the study would probably not have been funded because it would not have been necessary,” Jaselskis says in the speech, a copy of which was given to the Business Record.

The point is that engineers have the expertise to take on issues and make more informed decisions.

“The Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute is poised to help achieve the 2050 Challenge by educating engineers about public policy and leadership. EPLI will make it possible for more engineers to rise to leadership roles in industry and government and provide the necessary voice in passing reasonable legislation, especially where technology plays a major role,” Jaselskis said.

Plans are under way for a 10-week internship in Washington, D.C., to expose students to the legislative process.

Jaselskis points out that too few engineers are involved in public boards and commissions, let alone hold elected office. There is one engineer in the Iowa Legislature.

In addition, the institute hopes to place two faculty members every year in Washington, D.C., to help shape public policy.

Jaselskis was a director of the National Science Foundation program last year, and noted that he was able help “society in many ways.”

He was involved in funding basic research in the areas of transportation, infrastructure and construction, and he supported a workshop to help build sustainable infrastructure in developing countries.

The institute also has a “thematic year” in which it hosts visitors and conducts seminars to discuss a single issue of national importance, with the solution rooted in the use of technology. The first theme this fall will be “achieving sustainable energy from an environmental, technical, economic, agricultural and security perspective.”