Northrop Grumman Corporation
Vice President, International Infrastructure Systems
"Northrop Grumman counts heavily on engineering resources from ABET to ensure quality educational programs. In the next five years, we’d like to see an increased emphasis on software and systems engineering programs since more hardware is becoming a commodity and the value discriminator is increasingly in the software.
Additionally, we do more projects abroad in conjunction with foreign partners and governments, which will require us to use local engineering staff. We would like to see an increased focus on international accreditation to ensure consistency across our entire workforce. In 10 years, we’d like to see a standard program globally.
There is concern about maintaining engineering relevance in the U.S. given the numbers of engineering folks in the world (China and India, in particular). It is clear that we cannot keep up from a pure numbers standpoint, so we need to find a way to distinguish ourselves at a different level."