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03.09
GOLD
Launching Your Career e-Book Series: Lifelong
Learning — Your Key to an Enjoyable and
Rewarding Career
By Sharon
C. Richardson
John Meredith’s e-Book, the fourth in the
GOLD Series, entitled Launching Your Career:
Lifelong Learning — Your Key to An Enjoyable and
Rewarding Career, is a guide for engineering
students who are preparing to start their career,
as well as engineers who are in the early
phases of their
careers.
Meredith’s e-Book includes
chapters on The Importance of Lifelong Learning;
Charting
Your Course; The Launch Phase; The Long Haul;
Tips for the Busy Engineer; and Improving Your
Learning Process.
Preparation for a career should
begin while at the undergraduate level, towards
the end of undergraduate studies with an
assessment of knowledge, skills and
capabilities. The reason for this, Meredith
states, is “to identify gaps in knowledge skills
and tools that will be needed in the initial
phase of your professional career.” In the Charting Your Course
chapter,
Meredith gives practical advice on how to do an
assessment and he charts the different stages of
an assessment. “To continue growth and
development,” Meredith states, “a periodic
review is recommended.”
The Launch Phase includes information needed
to get organized in the first few days of
employment. Meredith concludes that if the work
environment is organized and time is managed
efficiently, then there will be time available
for learning activities. This organization
includes computer set-up, calendar updates,
availability of contacts, and filing systems.
“Scanning documents into electronic form can
help minimize paper, enabling control of the
never-ending flows of documents that you will
encounter,” states Meredith.
Meredith discusses the pleasures of
engineering work in The Long Haul. He lists
several non-technical skills like project
management and planning and budgeting that are
important to obtaining a rewarding career. He
cautions to avoid what he calls “technical
obsolesce” where learning goals are put on the
back burner to the extent that it is deferred
until another year or never happens, leading to
the inability to understand technical articles.
Meredith lists other symptoms of technical
obsolescence, and offers suggestions for how to
avoid it, and how to make adjustments if it ever
occurs.
“The most important factor in lifelong
learning is to have a solid background in the
fundamentals in your field of intended
practice,” states Meredith in Tips for the Busy
Engineer. In this chapter, Meredith says that it
is necessary to make a decision about goals
while in undergraduate studies. If a decision
has not been made at the end of undergraduate
studies, he suggests getting some work
experience before going on to get a master’s
degree because it can serve as a guide for
choosing the courses appropriate for the chosen
field of interest.
Meredith also lists several actions for
enhancing existing skills while on the job,
including finding a mentor, seeking and working
on leading-edge projects, joining a study group,
reading on a daily basis technical literature
related to the chosen profession, non-technical
materials, and joining a professional society,
among others.
Improving Your Learning Process deals with
reading effectiveness. Meredith provides
examples of how to improve reading
effectiveness. “You also gain new knowledge or
understanding through a process of discovery or
experimentation,” states Meredith. He lists
several ways to improve the discovery
experience, as well.
In Meredith’s Final Thoughts, he writes, “In
today’s competitive global economy, the
technical professional must keep current… You
must take responsibility for your own
development.. organize your work environment for
efficient learning…and develop habits that
improve your learning effectiveness.”
You can purchase your copy of Launching Your
Career: Lifelong Learning —
Your Key to an
Enjoyable and Rewarding Career at
www.ieeeusa.org/communications/ebooks for the
IEEE Member Price: $4.95 and Non-member Price:
$19.95.
Ideas for new e-Books
IEEE-USA E-Books invites IEEE members and
volunteers to submit queries for e-Books they
may want to write. If you’ve got an idea for an
e-Book that will educate other IEEE members on a
particular topic of expertise, e-mail your
e-Book queries and ideas to IEEE-USA Publishing
Manager Georgia Stelluto at
g.stelluto@ieee.org.
You can purchase IEEE-USA e-Books — and
download free ones —at
www.ieeeusa.org/communications/ebooks.
Sharon Richardson is
IEEE-USA’s Communications Assistant and
Editorial Assistant for IEEE-USA Today’s
Engineer Digest.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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