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Message from the President
Season's greetings, everyone! I hope each of you is enjoying the holiday season and able to recharge before the new year. The past few months have been busy for our leadership team as preparations continue for what is shaping up to be an outstanding IISE Annual Conference in Pittsburgh in May. Plans are underway for another gratifying outreach project so please consider volunteering and signing up - details are below. I look forward to seeing you there!
We've also been adding more projects in our new website, focusing on the UN Sustainability Goals. We'd like to continue to expand the knowledge base, so if you're aware of projects to include, please visit www.sustainableengineer.org for contact details.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, please contact me at
curtis_bush@yahoo.com.
Have a wonderful new year!
Curtis Bush
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The Sustainable Development Division
involves 2,291 members, from which 1,739 are students, 218 academics and 334
are industry professionals. This number asks for a stronger commitment from the group of volunteers. If you want to get involved in any of the current operations or to propose a new one, don't hesitate to contact us.
You may find us at:
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IISE Annual Conference Reminders
Around 55 abstracts were submitted to the Sustainable Development track for the 2017 IISE Annual Conference, which will be held May 20-23 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh.Congratulations to all the authors whose papers were accepted, we look forward to a high-quality program of presentations this year!
The following are some deadlines that you should keep in mind:
To make the IISE Annual Conference a high-quality event, the presenting author must register for the conference by March 13, 2017. Those abstracts that do not have the presenting author registered for the conference by March 13 will be removed from the conference program and proceedings by the web management system. If the presenting author cannot register by March 13, a co-author may substitute as the presenting author to present the paper instead and register for the conference.
Although paper submission is optional, you are strongly encouraged to submit a full paper. All papers will be double-blind refereed, and if accepted, will appear in the conference proceedings, which are indexed by ProQuest. The deadline for full paper submissions is January 16, 2017, and this deadline will be strictly enforced.
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Visits to Peru, Mexico and Colombia
Members of our division have been involved in different activities around the globe, concerning our commitment on building a wider understanding and deeper impact of the sustainable development ideas. During September, Eliseo Vilalta-Perdomo, our past-president, was invited as visiting lecturer to Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico) to support a weeklong workshop on complex global challenges. The aim of this workshop was for students to discuss and develop a practical solution to specific problems in Mexico City relating to "Zero Hunger," the second UN Sustainable Development Objective. During this workshop students attended several presentations from the Mexican delegation of the UN, the Mexican Federal Government and the Federal District of Mexico City. Students used participatory approaches to explore different approaches to solve this challenge.
In November, Ricardo Thierry-Aguilera and Vilalta-Perdomo were invited as keynote speakers for the Second International Engineering Conference organized by Universidad Privada Antenor Orrego (Peru). In addition, they ran workshops relating to our professional discipline from a sustainable development perspective. Different aspects were presented and discussed with participants, such as ergonomics and humanitarian and military logistics. Furthermore, Thierry- Aguilera addressed members of the Colegio de Ingenieros of Trujillo in terms of our responsibilities with the society, the environment and the economic growth.
Finally in December, Vilalta-Perdomo was invited by Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia) as keynote speaker for the Business Sustainability Workshop ran by the Bogota Municipality. This event involved the environmental award ceremony for outstanding businesses and organizations inside Bogota DC (Distrito Capital). Again, different aspects concerning sustainable development were revisited and examples on sustainable collaborative environments were presented. In addition, a meeting with the Los Andes IISE Chapter and an academic workshop were organized to discuss possible steps forward in the development of a joint research agenda on systems thinking approaches for sustainable development.
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2017 Community Outreach Project and Eco-Walk in Pittsburgh
Every year, the Sustainable Development Division organizes a service project and selects a deserving nonprofit organization in the community to work with during the IISE Annual Conference & Expo. We do not know where we will be volunteering, but we do know the date and city, so plan to travel on Friday, so you can be there for the event on Saturday May 20. We have not decided whether to have the event in the morning (8 -11 a.m.) or afternoon (1- 4 p.m.).
If you are interested in volunteering for the 2017 service project, please sign up
here and we will keep you informed.
We have also organized a 2-mile Eco-Walk so you can start each day on the right foot while you are in Pittsburgh. It's a fun way to see some of the city, exercise and meet people to start the conference day!
Who: Conference participants and their guests
What: Taking a brisk 2-mile walk along a defined path
Walk Time: 7:00 - 7:45 a.m. ET on May 21, 22 and 23
Where: Meet at 6:50 a.m. by the front desk in the lobby of the IISE Conference Hotel - Westin. We will depart promptly at 7 a.m.
How: Just show up at the meeting location in time, dressed to walk briskly (3.5-4 mph).
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17 Sustainable Development Goals
On January 1, 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development officially came into force. Visit our new website
www.sustainableengineer.org to see how industrial and systems engineers (in partnership with other engineering and technical resources) are tackling these global issues both locally and internationally. Which UN goal are you helping improve in your community?
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The Sustainable Development Division hosts educational webinars through IISE. These free one-hour presentations are a benefit of your IISE membership. For further information please visit the
webinar page.
Next Webinar: Life Cycle Assessment Methods and the Need for a Paradigm Shift for Climate Change Communication
Speaker: Dr. Gokhan Egilmez
Date: February 9, 2 - 3 p.m. Eastern
Description: Sustainability has become one of the crucial topics of interest worldwide across the people in academia, industry and governments. Decision-making initiatives have been supported with ample quantitative LCA methods significantly in the last few decades. However, the impact of climate change policymaking and the communicability of the complex LCA methods among stakeholders have been critiqued in the literature. To help with raising awareness about the recent discussions, this talk will provide an overview about the LCA methods from practicality, accuracy and scope perspectives. And, in the second part, specific attention will be paid on the failure of communicating the climate change across the stakeholders and more importantly with the society and students, in other words the future generations. And discussion will be provided about how to achieve a better and more effective communication among stakeholders.
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In addition to IISE, are you involved in either Engineers without Borders or the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education? We would like to reach out to these organizations and see how industrial engineers can become part of the process. If so, please contact John Corliss at
corlissj@peercpc.com.
Anybody interested in participating in the development of research conducive to identify what we as IE professionals understand as "sustainable development" and which are the implications for our profession please contact
evilaltaperdomo@lincoln.ac.uk.
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