Education Improvements? 9

[MechEng2005]

I started this thread because there have been a number of threads recently that have touched on the level of knowledge and abilities of new graduates. What would you suggest for improving the quality of new graduates so they are able to hit the ground running and succeed?

Some ideas:

- Hire professors based on their experience doing what (most) of the students will be doing after graduation (as opposed to hiring PhDs or government researchers with little experience in typical industry)

- Mandatory internship. What would be a good length? How would you verify that each student receieved the same level of experience/training during the internship? Would you have the internship graded, or pass/fail?

- More design problems. When I was a student, most problems were given as the loading on a beam is such-and-such. What section modulus is required if the yield strength is 50ksi? Students were not even required to specify the beam, just find a minimum section modulus. I am thinking something more like a senior design project where a goal is given and there are many possible ways to accomplish it. Hopefully the design could be built and tested as well, but at the very least it should be checked for all thing requirements of an actual engineering design (i.e. how easy it is to build, cost, etc).

- Tours and visits of engineering offices and/or industries. For example, I work in machine design and had seen hardly any factories or industrial plants where the machines we create are used when I graduated.

- Separating different majors in "general" classes. For example, have different calculus classes for engineering and physics majors.


I look forward to the discussion and appreciate any thoughts!
-- MechEng2005

 

[moltenmetal]

xnuke: I care enough about this issue to volunteer to fix it. But all I can manage is lecturing a few hours in one course at my alma mater. I'd be welcome to do more if I would volunteer the hours, but pay at an engineer's rate is out of the question.

Each uni is different, and they change over time. When I was taught, there were a few profs with industrial experience. The others did some industrial consulting, but narrowly related to their specific field of research. But those folks have long ago retired. The new crop at my uni are all hard-core academics with little to no industrial experience relevant to engineering per se. They're judged on their ability to crank out journal papers and write grant proposals. The sudents leaving a four-month co-op placement at my firm have a far better and more practical understanding of process equipment sizing and selection than the prof who will later attempt to teach them the subject.

I agree that many employers expect the universities to do substantially ALL their job training for them, which is patently ridiculous. Here in Canada, over twenty plus years, firms got addicted to a job market swamped with experienced people desperate for relevant work. The programs they had in place to train new hires and provide mentorship became irrelevant and were forgotten. Newer firms like ours never needed to develop such programs- until recently.

 

[DesignerGuy16]

Funny I learned more about manufacturing and design getting an industrial engineering degree than I learned in 2 years of mechanical engineering. I switched programs and schools, but I've been working in mechanical design/engineering for nearly 10 years now.

It's all in the perspective. The industrial engineering degree felt more like a co-op job/internship, where the engineering classes didn't do more than skim the surface and throw theory at you.

Ironically enough I'm going back to school through the engineering math/physics and going for a masters in mechanical engineering. Now that after 10 years experience I see the value in the basics I want to strengthen that part of my experience.

I've seen enough "engineers" that are HORRIBLE designers, and isn't the purpose of engineering to make things? Things like taking no ergonomics, maintenance, etc into account, or evening be able to construct a proper blueprint. It's like they can do math, but have no vision. I've solved more problems by taking a step back and envisioning the rhetorical simple line from A to B. When you really simplify things the raw calculations always seem to fall right into place.

Maybe I'm just rambling, but a little more application than raw theory would go a long way. It's like a generation of number crunchers who can't see the forest for the trees.

James Spisich
Design Engineer, CSWP

 

[csd72]

Engineering is a very complex profession and there is no way that you can be taught everything you need to know in 4 years. It requires life long learning.

When I finished Uni I struggled to do my first design because I really didnt know where to start. I asked people, got enough advice and then moved on.

I get the feeling that many employers these days expect a graduate to be ready for anything but that is not the case now, nor has it ever been. A fresh graduate needs to be taught on the job how to be an engineer.

 

[MechEng2005]

Thanks for the responses all! I wouldn't have expected "less math" to come up, but am glad it did! I know I spent a fair amount of time learning expansion techniques to approximate functions. Is it really necessary to give engineers the ability to approximate sin(23 deg.)? I certainly keep a calculator in my toolbag, and at the office I have a calculator or Excel... However, I don't want to go to the extreme. I certainly don't think it is appropriate to have engineering students not learn derivatives and integration, even though most students currently have a pocket calculator that can do it.

Somewhat off the original topic, how long do you think it typically takes a new grad to become acceptable with experience or training (if any on-the-job training is supplied)? Or what length of time should hiring firms expect?

-- MechEng2005

 

[Mr168]

Coming straight from my boss' mouth, "You're first five years here will be one big learning experience."

 

[HgTX]

Yeah, I suppose I could have done without some of the finer points of trig. Though small-angle approximations are priceless.

I also agree with those who feel industry has dropped the ball. For those who go the PE route, we're supposed to spend four years as an "engineer in training" (or "engineer intern" I think they call it now). That means we're supposed to be TRAINED by someone, not dropped in the middle of the soup because budget cuts mean staff is down to the bare minimum and they fired all the experienced people because they cost more. That wasn't really what went on at my workplace, but nevertheless I had about two years working under someone who had something to teach me, and the rest of the time I was supervised by those who attested to my work in all the legal ways, but didn't really contribute to my professional worth. I think I turned out okay anyway (partly because of the network of people outside my workplace that the first boss helped me set up), but I don't think that's what was originally in the mind of whoever set up the system lo these many decades ago.

And since college programs don't have PE or non-PE tracks, if the person headed for the PE is supposed to have 4 years of training directly under another engineer before they can function on their own, surely people falling under the "industrial exemption" are equally in need of such training--and yet even less likely to get it because there's no mandate for supervision by a PE, so they may be the only engineer there.

Hg

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[csd72]

Yes, experience is definately not valued the way it should be.

 

[SKIAK]

I say get rid of the catch-all engineering degrees and offer more specific curriculum. Most of the engineering classes I took had nothing to do with structural engineering (Intro to Transportation Engineering, Water Resource Engineering, Environmental Engineering... ect.) and offer more design based classes where you might have one project you work on in a semester, broken up into parts, rather than individual independant pre-fabed homework problems. I had one professor who taught his class like that and learned more in there than most of my classes.

I realize that a lot of students don't know exactly what they are going for when the get to college, but thats what change of major forms are for. I used one once, they work.

 

[ivymike]

I'm only a decade or so out of school, and I'd have to say that UC Davis did a heck of a good job preparing me to be successful in engineering. The coursework was strong fundamentals and practical problem solving, and didn't really do much more than brush on software methods. I didn't learn CAD in college - had to pick that up on my own - but I did spend 10 weeks drawing with pencil and paper. Did a few finite-difference heat transfer problems, but had to code them in fortran. Did a few dynamic system things and some circuit analysis using canned software, but that was about it (oh yeah, and lots of MathCAD and Excel). I had to do lots of measurements and analyses and report writing, and many of the profs wanted "practical" results more than pretty ones. Anyway, I don't have any complaints with the education I got, and I think it's served me well so far.

I've worked with a few fresh-from-school engineers, and many of them complained that they were stuck in roles where they were prevented from using more than their MS Excel skills. Even after they'd doing a job several years, their "mentors" would snatch work away from them rather than let them work through it. They'd get left out of the loop in discussions, etc., when they needed to be engaged to learn, the while the "mentors" would gripe to each other in the lunch room about how kids these days don't learn anything.

 

[xnuke]

Moltenmetal: a star to you for getting out there and teaching! I can only manage a few hours teaching, too. Remember, though, you are influencing quite a few people along the way. Now, if we could only convince more practicing engineers to get out there and teach, and more academic departments to hire them, we'd be well on our way to making things better.

xnuke
"Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
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[moltenmetal]

dgillie: I like the teaching approach you've discussed but disagree with the notion that we need more "specialists" at the Bachelors' level: specialization is what the Masters and PhD levels are for, as well as the double major. We find no shortage of so-called "specialists", usually out of work and looking to de-specialize. Good generalists in our experience are hard to find, so we build 'em from the Bachelors' level up. We've had little success broadening the experience of a reformed specialist.

Kids leaving with a Bachelors' degree have no idea where they're going to find their first job, and pidgeon-holing them into a sub-sub discipline right out of school will come at the cost of some core competencies they'll (ie. we'll) very likley need later.

We've seen and been disgusted with this very trend. We refer to it as "buzzword engineering". Any term that gets media exposure as the hot new thing rapidly gets an engineering sub-discipline named after it. It's used as a means to expand the uni and attract additional government funding. In reality, they dropped core subjects from one of the other disciplines in order to make room for the hobby horse specialist classes of a few of the research profs. At my alma mater it was environmental, biotech, then nanotechnology engineering and mechatronics...Local industry has no freaking idea what to do with these students and hence they have trouble finding co-op placements. Great for the kid who knows they want a PhD right out of high school I guess.

 

[csd72]

moltenmetal,

I think you are taking the term specialisation a bit further than dgillie intended. Most structural engineers effectively do a civil engineering degree with some structural subjects.

Civil and structural have many common threads, but I would argue that they are as different as say chemical and industrial engineering.

 

[theonlynamenottaken]

Hmmm, I can't believe no one has mentioned this concept:

What about the first two years of undergraduate that you spent learning History, Psychology, Health, Social Sciences, Foreign Languages, and other courses that really weren't and haven't been applicable to your future/present career?

I once dated a German girl - the daughter of a German engineer. We were discussing my plans for getting a Masters in structural engineering when I asked him about his education. He said a Master's degree wouldn't help him much because he got his Bachelor's degree in Germany. He said the curriculum was engineering from day one. They had upper level math (see my math comments below), one "Writing for Engineers" class, 'Engineering in History' (highlighting failures and so forth), and from there it was dedicated engineering courses. Furthermore, the engineering courses strive to provide not only theoretical knowledge, but practical knowledge as well.

Of course, to offer such an engineering curriculum as I've described does require very "prepared" freshmen. (see KENAT's post above). My overall point is that I don't believe that higher education has to be "well-rounded" to create a "well-rounded" adult mind. Are we creating scholars or engineers? I certainly don't agree with the thinking that, "We had to do it, so these kids will have to endure it as well..."

My personal technique for obtaining a "pseudo" version of this curriculum in undergrad was to attend community college for a year and half, then I transferred to Georgia Tech with all my "core crap" complete. I worked alot during community college and successfully saved the funds necessary to complete my Bachelor's after transferring. Even my guidance counselors at Georgia Tech praised this methodology. (Note of advice: If you plan to pursue such a path, or to recommend this to a young mind, listen to your 'eventual school' admissions counselors over the community college's counselors to avoid losing course hours in transfer...)

Upper Level Math: I agree with the split engineering education system in the U.S. - Engineering & Engineering Technology. If you don't want to get into the "heady" side of engineering and you want to be in the field and get your hands dirty - get an Engineering Technology degree. The math is not as daunting and it creates very practical, common sense engineers/engineering technicians. If you want to crunch numbers, design, analyze, etc - you need some upper level math.

Total Engineering Education: (see csd72's post above) To truly become an "Engineer's Engineer" requires life long learning, regardless of college. Take your Continuing Education requirements seriously, pore through manuals, codes and guidebooks for pleasure, admire and take from other's works and experiences, and never, ever think that you know it all...

 

[csd72]

I think the US is the only country that does that, My 4 year bachelors was all on engineering and related subjects. High level maths from year 1.

 

[SKIAK]

Hmm... csd72 got my drift, I wasn't really advocating specialists. All I meant was I got my bachelors in civil engineering, and in the firm I work for I work in the "structural" not "civil" department (realizing of course the term civil referring to public works and such).

I think I was leaning to say what theonlynamenottaken was getting at as well. For the first year or so they want you to have "core" classes, fine. After that I think your classes should reflect reasonably specific course work. As I mentioned earlier, I don't see how transportation engineering, for example, has helped me become a more rounded structural engineer. Take out classes that are not as relevant and allow more study in the field the student is interested in. More classes to help prepare them for work, of course this might only ammount to (3) or (4) classes but it might be enough to help new graduates "hit the ground running and succeed" better. Not a complete overhaul of the educational system which would take years to see, but a small modification that I think would produce results in a few years.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Back to the original question again.

- More design problems.

All of our design problems were made up. We did try to organise our team to be like a real one: the structural guy, the fluids guy, the nuts & bolts guy, the secretary (wealthy foreign student with his own computer and photocopier). But ultimately it was just an exercise.

But these days automotive people have Formula SAE/Formula Student/etc. I can't think of something more interesting and relevant for a budding automotive engineer. My work sometimes involves interaction with some of these teams and you can see the pride and interest oozing out of them.

I couldn't have cared less if my hypothetical nuclear rod handling device would have worked if built.

- Steve

 

[Lion06]

Part of this comes back to ABET accreditation. For a program to be ABET accredited in CE, it has to offer competency in (4) disciplines. FOUR. Tell me how you come out of an undergrad program having to demonstrate competence in (4) engineering disciplines and have a relative mastery of any single one of them?! It is very difficult. If you knock down the number of disciplines a program offers........ well, now you've just defined the biggest difference between an "engineering" degree and an "ET" degree.
I do feel that the programs should be discipline specific (or emcompass, at the most, two disciplines to afford some flexibility if you don't truly know what you want to do), but that you can't get rid of the maths and sciences and advanced mechanics/analysis classes.
The design courses are extremely easy....... extremely easy. Even the basic analysis/mechanics courses are pretty easy. It is the advanced mechanics/analysis courses where you really find out what you're made of and test (as well as further develop) your intuition and understanding of structural behavior. I'm sure it is similar in other disciplines.

 

[Lion06]

theonlynamenottaken-

Sorry, I just re-read your post and I always feel the need to clarify when I see comments regarding "engineering" degrees vs. "ET" degrees.
While it is true that ABET doesn't require math beyond calculus, many ET programs do.
The biggest difference between a CE degree and an ET degree is the number of disciplines you are required to demonstrate competency in. A CE degree requires competency in (4) disciplines, an ET degree requires competency in (2).
I took math up to diff. eq., and calc based physics. As an undergrad I took (2) steel courses, (2) concrete courses, (1) foundation course, (2) analysis courses - including matrix analysis and energy methods, (1) course on wind/seismic analysis, and a comprehensive senior project that required design and detailing of a small building. That was in addition to the typical static, dynamics, strength of materials, soil mechanics, fluid mechanics, material science, surveying.
That was all undergrad. That is more structural classes than most undergrad CE degrees will let you take. Not necessarily because they aren't offered, but because you have to dedicate class time to other disciplines.
The only point I am making is that saying you can't get into the "heady side" of engineering with an ET degree demonstrates a lack of understanding of the programs, a lack of interaction with someone out of a decent ET program, interaction with someone out of a poor ET program, or some combination of the three.

 

[davefitz]

Interesting thread, but it seems to be directed only at the older established engineering fields, as had existed prior to 1970.

The fast growing engineering fields that may have the most potential for the future may include nano technologies, mechatronics and applications with both machinery and computer controls, bio-mechanics, biologic process design including water and wastewater technologies, and of course sustainable engineering practices . A freshman eng student should be advised of these new technologies prior to their selecting a final major, although not all eng schools are prepared to educate their students in all of these mentioned areas.

 

[electricpete]

Lots of good comments.

One aspect debated was the value of the math (and perhaps theory), as opposed to practical aspects.

As a very new graduate, I felt a little overwhelmed by all the real-world stuff that I had not been exposed to and I tended to think the theoretical parts of my training were a waste of time.

Now, 20+ years out of college (man, do I feel old!), I feel the opposite. I have had to do a lot of on-the-job learning in various job responsibilties along the way. There is no practical training that could have given me all that. But having the core math/theory skills made that on-the-job learning a lot easier.

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