Engineering Apprenticeship 6

[metengr]

One improvement that I would like to see with the engineering profession, is a mandatory requirement for engineering apprenticeship. When I attended college, there was a little known program called "Cooperative Engineering" where engineering students could alternate work/study. The Cooperative refers to a partnership between the university and industry. Under the Coop program, you were able to receive a small number of credit hours toward graduation, and evaluate work as a "junior engineer". That was the time to change your major, which some students did after 1 semester of work. This program was also a way of making money to pay for your education. The upside was exposure to engineering work, developing contacts and when I returned to school during non-work semesters, I was so far ahead of most engineering students that had NO clue what an engineer does. The down side was it took 5 years to graduate instead of 4 because alternating semesters resulted in missing certain courses that were offered only once a year.

The extra year was well worth it. I had worked at a research center for a fortune 500 company during my Junior and Senior years. The work experience plus networking helped me to land a job. So, my suggestion to potential engineering students is to enroll in a similar program and not worry about rushing thru 4 years of college.

 

[28021973]

We had a project engineer sent to site years ago to help out due to a staff shortage.

This guy was a gradute engineer, brilliant at project managing.

But we needed him to muck in and give us a hand, a bit of fitting, electrical installation work, welding etc, he could not do any of them, some engineer...!

Thats what you get for not doing an apprenticeship.

 

[HgTX]

That's not "some engineer", that's "some management decision" neglecting to match skills with job duties. Someone used the wrong tool for the job, or the right tool for the wrong job, or something.

I don't think an engineering apprenticeship along the lines of co-op would teach those "trade" skills either.

Electrical engineers are not electricians, and vice versa.
Hydraulic engineers are not plumbers.
Metallurgists are not welders.
Geotechnical engineers are not Cat drivers.
Agricultural engineers are not farmers.
Civil/Structural engineers are neither carpenters nor masons.
Mechanical engineers are not machinists.

The trade skills are not necessarily a subset of the engineering skills. If you can do both, it means that you are fortunate enough to have two sets of skills, not that you're a rare example of a "real" engineer.

If you're an engineer on projects that involve such skills, you should understand what it takes to do them so that you don't design something unbuildable, but it doesn't mean you need to be able to physically build it yourself. That's not what engineers are for, and chances are the engineer doesn't do enough of the trade skill to be as reliable at it as an experienced tradesperson.

Hg

 

[Tobalcane]

HgTX,

I agree with you there one hundred percent. For some reason there is confusion between technician/tradesmen and engineer. But, I’m beating a dead horse here. I did my engineering internship at a company, and it consisted doing test and analysis with the physicists. We had our technicians do the set up work per our (me and my mentor who is an ABET graduated engineer) design to accommodate the physicists test. I did not touch a tool (well that was due to the technician’s union rules). My mentor showed me how to work with the physicist and find out what he wanted to do. Then we came up with a plan to do the design. He showed me some of the typical analysis that he does for the field we were designing in. We picked out the equipment and hardware we needed. Came up with a design and had the physicist concur with us that this is what we (as a group) should do. Had the apparatus built by the machinist and had the techs put it together and then ran the physicist’s test with success. Wow, this is basically what I’m doing now but in a different field. I have never touched a lath or milling machine. Don’t get me wrong, our machinist are great, they would give me there opinion even if I did not ask for it. But, at the end of the day, my design has to work the way that I intended. If it did not, trust me the machinist or tech will not be the people to blame, it will be me the engineer.


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[Lorentz]

Hello All!

Since I have come out so strongly in favor of co-op programs (in this thread and others), I think I'd better clear up any misunderstanding of what I mean.

The type of program I'm recommending has students working under the direct supervision of experienced engineers so that they can learn what engineering is really like. If a university is just placing students in odd jobs as helpers to tradespeople, they really don't have a good co-op program.

And HgTX, I am becoming a huge fan of your posts. I have known electricians who completed engineering programs and could legitimately claim both titles. But an EE grad with only university training who think "trade skills" are merely "a subset of the engineering skills" needs a good talking to before someone gets hurt!

I know some companies think this way, but I think this should be illegal. The lengthy apprenticeship and strict licensing requirements for electricians exist for good reason. The distinction between tradespeople and engineers is perhaps worthy of its own thread, but I'll leave that up to someone else to start.

 

[HgTX]

Aw shucks, Lorentz...

I thought about starting a new thread but dunno if it quite warrants it.

I've run into the engineer/tradesperson problem in my own job.

(1) I can't weld. I've done just enough of it to know I can't, and to know what someone needs to be able to do. Experience with welding would help me a little with my job, but I'm not going to spend my time in a welding class when I could be spending that time taking metallurgy courses, learning more about ultrasonic testing, etc.

(2) My office is the engineering support for QA inspectors. Someone got the idea that the engineers should be certified welding inspectors as well--not just for our training (good idea) but so that we could fill in for the inspectors (really bad idea). There is a world of difference between an engineer who happens to have taken a training class and a CWI who walks the shop floor daily, and if they're short an inspector they need to hire an outside contractor, not throw me in there to fake it. I'm not sure whether I was persuasive or the powers that be have short attention spans, but the whole thing went away.

Back to the original topic, I never did a co-op. Engineering was my second bachelor's degree and I didn't have the time. I worked on a research project which gave me a little more real-world experience than classroom work alone would have.

So I don't really know exactly what co-op programs offer. They seem like a very good idea. But I can't imagine any co-op that could possibly have prepared me for my job. Without any of these appearing in my job description, I am a manager, a consultant, a negotiator, a moderator, an investigator, a technical writer--and that's been my job since my first day out of grad school.

Hg

 

[makeup]

Who many companies out there actually have a structured training program?

 

[HgTX]

The agency I work for has an optional rotation program for new employees to have them crosstrain in various areas of the agency. They spend several months doing each thing, so it takes a year or two. Makes for a pretty well-rounded civil engineer.

I'm a specialist so I didn't go that route, but I was sent to various external training courses and did an 8-month job rotation in another division. Training opportunities continue throughout the employee's career and a training plan is part of our written performance plan. Most of what I do, though, I learned on the job.

I'm under the impression that training opportunities are better for us than they are in the private sector.

Hg