A Career in Engineering!

What is an engineer? Engineering is science applied to making machinery and structures. This differs from what scientists do in that an engineers goal is not to discover new physical properties but to apply what we already know. Heres an example: Andre Ampere was a great scientist who discovered many interesting facts about the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Ampere produced elaborate models of his discoveries. These models are applied by engineers to produce useful objects. One useful object that resulted from Amperes work is the telephone receiver. Engineering has become such a diverse field that it is broken up into specialties. Some of these specialties include: Aerospace Engineering Engineers who design aircraft, missiles, and space shuttles. Agricultural Engineering Engineers who design machinery and structures that help improve agricultural product production while conserving water and soil resources. Biomedical Engineering Engineers who apply many different technologies to produce products such as heart pacemakers, hearing aids, and life support systems used in surgery. Chemical Engineering Engineers who apply chemical science to produce products such as new plastics, fertilizers, and fuels for our automobiles. Civil Engineering Engineers who design highways, sky scrapers, and hydro-electric dams. Electrical Engineers Engineers who design the electronics found in your stereo, computer, satellite systems, and power sub-stations. Environmental Engineering Engineers who design systems to prevent pollution of our environment. Industrial Engineering Engineers who organize industrial machinery and processes to product products in the most efficient way. Think about how you would produce ten tons of potato chips, sealed in colorfully printed bags and ship them to stores every day! Tasks such as this are the challenge of industrial engineers. Mechanical Engineering Engineers who design the mechanical parts of things such as automobile engines, Mars rovers, and even pencil sharpeners! With so many diverse fields and projects, you never get bored being an engineer!

Albert W. Straub 2010

Over 1.6 million people worked as engineers in the U.S. during the year 2008. Engineering salaries vary considerably between the different engineering disciplines, experience level, and current demand for a particular skill.
Type of Engineer Aerospace Agricultural Biomedical Chemical Civil Computer Hardware Electrical Environmental Industrial Materials Mechanical Mining Nuclear Petroleum # of Jobs 71,600 2,700 16,000 31,700 278,400 74,700
157,800

54,300 214,800 24,400 238,700 7,100 16,900 21,900

Table 1) Number of engineers employed per discipline in the year 2008. Finally, some engineers use their skill sets as stepping stones into related specialties such as patent law, sales, and management. What does an engineer do on a daily basis? Engineering a product may take from a couple of weeks to several years. Hopefully, the engineering company you work for is like mine and they follow a design process. To start the process, someone needs to find out what you should be building. That someone is the marketing group. The marketing group gives the engineering group some information on the product they think they can sell. The engineering group then breaks down the component into specific disciplines required to produce the product. Mechanical engineers design the physical product and the packaging, electrical engineers design the electronic portions, and so on. The engineering group works as a team. When each engineering discipline finishes their section of a project they combined them together with the other engineers in a process called integration. Finally, when the entire product is finished it is tested by the quality assurance department. If the quality assurance department determines that the product meets the marketing groups requirements the product is approved for manufacturing. Engineers generally never make more than one or two prototypes of a given design. They leave that for the manufacturing team.

Albert W. Straub 2010

How does one become an engineer? In a nutshell lots of education. You will need to take as many math and science courses as you can in your pre-college years. An engineering degree typically requires four or five years of college. The majority of the courses you take will rely heavily on your math and science skills. No sweat! you say. Im good at math and science. I have all As and Bs! Well, you have to keep in mind that you are in an environment with people who may not enjoy math as much as you and have no intention of pursuing a technical career path. Now, imagine that you are in the same class but that everyone who received less than an A is no longer in your class. So you all have As! Great! Not quite. Now imagine that of the remaining A students in the class you have to give some As, some Bs, and some Cs. How will you measure up now? The education you receive now is free. When you attend a university it could cost $800 to be attending the same class. Wouldnt it be nice if you could just test out of that first semester calculus class? What would you do with an extra $800? What about writing courses? In your career as an engineer, you will produce thousands of pages of documents. How far you advance in your career will depend heavily on your ability to communicate your ideas to others. Learn to write well! Finally, you should look into learning a bit about computer programming. Most engineering courses rely heavily on your ability to use and program a computer. One easy way to get started is to learn the Java programming language. Resources are free and available at http://java.sun.com. Get a copy of the J2SE SDK (Software Development Kit) and get started! What type of courses will I take as an engineering student? As an example, to receive my degree in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado my math requirements included three semesters of calculus and one semester of a combination of differential equations and linear algebra. I was also required to take a math technical elective. I chose complex variables because it is useful in my field of engineering. Additionally, you get to take several semesters of physics, chemistry, probability, and literature courses. All of these are background courses for the real task at hand learning electrical engineering! The electrical engineering courses consist of about 6 electronics courses and several technical electives. Technical electives are the best! Want to design robots? They have electives on how to design robots!

Albert W. Straub 2010

Online references.
Occupational Outlook Quarterly: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/ooqhome.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm BLS Career Information: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ Aerospace Engineering: http://www.aia-aerospace.org/ http://www.aiaa.org/ Agricultural Engineering: http://www.asae.org/ Biomedical Engineering: http://www.bmes.org/careers.asp Civil Engineering: http://www.asce.org Chemical Engineering: http://www.aiche.org/ Electronics Engineering:
http://www.ieee.org

http://ecee.colorado.edu/academics/courses/courselist.html (2010)
Environmental Engineering: http://www.enviro-engrs.org/newlook/links.htm Industrial Engineering: http://www.iienet.org/ Mining Engineering: http://www.smenet.org

Mechanical Engineering: http://www.asme.org/ Petroleum Engineering: http://www.aiche.org/

Albert W. Straub 2010