Social Engineering Program Responding to Growing
Economies
Melany M. Ciampi
President
Safety, Health and Environment Research Org. - SHERO
São Paulo, Brazil
E-mail: melany@copec.org.br
Claudio da Rocha Brito
President
Science and Education Research Council - COPEC
São Paulo, Brazil
E-mail: cdrbrito@copec.org.brr
Rosa M. Vasconcelos
President
Pedagogical Council - University of Minho
Guimarães, Portugal
E-mail: rosa@det.uminho.pt
Luis A. Amaral
President
Computer Graphics Center - CCG
Guimarães, PORTUGAL
E-mail: amaral@des.uminho.pt
Victor F. A. Barros
Executive Secretary
Science and Education Research Council - COPEC
São Paulo, BRAZIL
E-mail: victor@copec.org.br
Abstract—Following the new trend in education, more focused in
a global perspective COPEC - Science and Education Research
Council is offering an MBA, on line, in Social Engineering for all
Countries of CPLP - Portuguese Language Countries
Community. The goal is to cover these countries engineers that
also are seeking for opportunities, as the majority are countries
of growing economy based on their very rich resources. The idea
of an on line program is the possibility of reaching a broader
audience and at the same time to enrich the experience of
offering and implementing a program that can disseminate ideas
and concepts that fits to the needs of the target audience. The
Education Research Team of COPEC is convinced that
Engineers with the proper knowledge and skills can perform in
order to solve social problems once engineers are problem
solvers.
Keywords - online education; science and technology;
research; public economy; population growth.
I. INTRODUCTION
The present world, full of challenges and crises of deep
consequences to society as well to the environment, has a
strong incidence in terms of decision-making in any field. It
means that it is becoming more and more complex and difficult
to take decisions 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 [1].
The effects of this aspect in engineering formation implies
a different approach providing the future engineers a notion
about 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.
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 the society can be. Real time
communication and brutal amount of information available
have changed drastically how people relate; make business and
study [2].
The proposal of COPEC - Science and Education Research
Council for next five years is the offering of MBA by Distance
Learning due to the new global education demand. The new
programs will be delivered in Portuguese in a first moment, for
all Countries of CPLP - Portuguese Language Countries
Community. The idea is to cover these countries that also are
seeking for opportunities, as the majority of them are growing
978-1-4799-0152-4/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 25-27 September 2013, Kazan National Research Technological University, Kazan, Russia
2013 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL)
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