Engineering: What are we doing?

Preface

I gave one of four keynote speeches at the May 2026 combined meeting of the Christian Engineering Society (CES) and the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences (ACMS).

What follows is the keynote speech, nearly exactly as delivered in the Recital Hall of the Covenant Fine Arts Center at Calvin University on 29 May 2026. Most of my slides, albeit with animations removed, are interspersed throughout the text as static images to give readers a sense of the images that accompanied the speech. For the back story and a sense of the occasion beyond the slides, see my blog post about the keynote.

Making a point. Source: Randy Pruim.

The pages that follow will make more sense if you know a few things about the event:

1. I was introduced by my colleague and friend Jeremy Van Antwerp, to whom I refer several times during the speech.
2. I give reference to blue (backward) and fuchsia (forward) signs to affixed to each row of seats in the auditorium. The signs were labeled with “Engineering” or “Mathematical sciences” to indicate seating for audience members. The signs facilitated a few short discussions during the keynote.
3. Although this online version of the keynote includes chapters (Creation, Problems and the Fall, and Redemption), I did not indicate the chapters during the speech. As you will read, I offered small lego kits to attendees who could identify the “Creation, Fall, Redemption” structure of the speech. In fact, I gave away all five kits in 24 hours!