Software Engineers

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March 29, 2003, 11:53PM
An engineer by any other name
Legislature to decide if computer programmers can legally use the title

AUSTIN -- One of the oddest battles of the 78th Legislature is pitting Texas' licensed professional engineers against the high-tech industry's software dudes.

At issue is just who in Texas can call himself an engineer.

"It's one of the silliest issues we're having to deal with this session, but it's also one of the most important," said Steven Kester, legislative director of the American Electronics Association, an organization of computer companies.

Texas has one of the nation's strictest engineering practices acts and limits the title of engineer to those people who have studied engineering and passed a licensing exam.

And that law puts most of the "engineers" in the high-tech industry out of the field. Kester said the restriction threatens high-tech growth in Texas.

But Ken Rigsbee, chairman of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers legislative committee, said the restriction is needed to protect the public.

Rigsbee said state restrictions on who can call themselves engineers were set up decades ago after someone misengineered a heating pipe system at the New London Junior-Senior High School.

An explosion of natural gas in the pipe system killed 300 students and teachers in 1937.

[...]

Rest of article is at:
<a href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/1841652">http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/1841652</a> Received on Sun Mar 30 15:13:00 2003