Political environment is full of challenges and crises of deep consequences to society
as well as to the environment and it has a strong incidence in terms of decision
making in any field. It means that taking decisions is becoming more and more
complex and difficult 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.
The effects of this aspect in engineering education implies a different approach
providing the future engineers with notions on 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 [1].
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 society can be. Real time
communication and brutal amount of information available have drastically changed
how people relate, make business and study [2].
The proposal of COPEC - Science and Education Research Council for the next five
years is the offering of an 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 developing and are very wealthy countries. The first group of programs is: MBA
in Social Engineering and MBA in International Engineering Educator, both with
International Recognition.FCT -Federación Española de Enfermedades Raras(FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-022674
