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Engineering schools have been interacting, more and more, with society in a very intensive way in order to deal with its necessities, integrating them in these courses and, as a consequence, preparing professionals with an adequate profile. This paper shows the author's vision about the interactions between market and communities, and which are the actions to be taken as change agents in the academic world to achieve flexibility and engagement for excellence. This work also shows the author's vision about how to prepare an entrepreneur engineer and how the industrial activities will evolve in Brazil with these new structures. The old paradigm, "teaching, " is now confronted with a new one, "learning, " which requires that a new dynamic interaction with teachers, students, school, work market and society be implemented. Finally, the paper shows what FEI (Faculdade de Engenharia Industrial) is doing to deal with these challenges, and some questions are put forward for reflection and debates, which are relevant for all that are agents of development for the new engineering professionals. (ASK) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document