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Silicon Valley Nation: What's the right engineering school?
Brian Fuller
11/26/2012 4:15 PM EST
SAN FRANCISCO--If you're lucky enough to have one of your kids
interested in following in your engineering footsteps, now is a time
of great stress. Which engineering school is going to be the right
fit? It's applications time, and the choices seem infinite.
But there's hope: The National Academy of Engineering recently released a report that may gave you some ammo, especially if you're looking for schools that emphasize an integrated, real-world-experience approach to their engineering curricula. The report, "Infusing Real World Experiences into Engineering Education," details 29 engineering programs at colleges and universities across the country that NAE considers progressive in this way. It breaks up its analysis into segments such as capstone programs, first-year programs, extracurricular programs, co-op programs and basic curricula, among others.
AMD sponsored the project as part of its NextGen Engineering program.
“Simply mastering technical engineering is no longer enough to successfully compete and lead in today’s marketplace,” Mark Papermaster, AMD’s senior vice president and CTO, said when the program kicked off.
The report raises eyebrows--in a good way. For instance: Grand Valley State. Who? This unheralded engineering program in Allendale, Mich., was cited for its 25-year-old coop program which prepares graduating engineers who are “industry ready.”
Other programs of note:
While we can't ignore the fundamentals of engineering education, we need to think bigger and differently about preparing the generation of engineers that will deal with tomorrow's problems.
I'm interested in your experiences: Have you assessed engineering schools, either for yourself or your kids, with the NAE's real-world experience criterion in mind?
Related stories:
--Silicon Valley Nation: Talent gap
--Silicon Valley Nation: Immigration do-over
--Nurturing innovation
--A space of their own making
But there's hope: The National Academy of Engineering recently released a report that may gave you some ammo, especially if you're looking for schools that emphasize an integrated, real-world-experience approach to their engineering curricula. The report, "Infusing Real World Experiences into Engineering Education," details 29 engineering programs at colleges and universities across the country that NAE considers progressive in this way. It breaks up its analysis into segments such as capstone programs, first-year programs, extracurricular programs, co-op programs and basic curricula, among others.
AMD sponsored the project as part of its NextGen Engineering program.
“Simply mastering technical engineering is no longer enough to successfully compete and lead in today’s marketplace,” Mark Papermaster, AMD’s senior vice president and CTO, said when the program kicked off.
The report raises eyebrows--in a good way. For instance: Grand Valley State. Who? This unheralded engineering program in Allendale, Mich., was cited for its 25-year-old coop program which prepares graduating engineers who are “industry ready.”
Other programs of note:
- Arizona State's iProjects program, which began in 2008, is open to all 35 degree programs in the five primary units within ASU's College of Technology and Innovation. The iProjects program uses large numbers of team-based projects, and recognizes that "traditional academic degree program structures do not engender pervasive interdisciplinary practicebased work."
- Worcester Polytechnic offers a first-year program (first year!) titled "Great Problems Seminars" that gives provide students project experience that prepares them for more substantial required projects. These projects can focus either on an area such as energy or healthcare or can analyze the NAE Grand Challenges.
- Purdue engineering's EPICS (Engineering
Projects in Community Service) program gives
students credit for participating in multidisciplinary design
teams that real problems for local and global not-for-profit
organizations.
While we can't ignore the fundamentals of engineering education, we need to think bigger and differently about preparing the generation of engineers that will deal with tomorrow's problems.
I'm interested in your experiences: Have you assessed engineering schools, either for yourself or your kids, with the NAE's real-world experience criterion in mind?
Related stories:
--Silicon Valley Nation: Talent gap
--Silicon Valley Nation: Immigration do-over
--Nurturing innovation
--A space of their own making
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SylvieBarak
11/27/2012 8:53 AM EST
“industry ready” - that's the key today, really, isn't it. So many new grads just can't get a job because of that awful catch 22 of "no job experience, no job." Any college that can get itself a reputation as a place where kids not only learn, but actually DO, is really doing their graduates a huge favor. I'd take that over a prestigious name any day.
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Frank Eory
11/27/2012 12:15 PM EST
What these programs have in common is making students "industry ready" by providing them opportunities to do real engineering work, as part of a team, before graduation.
For students attending schools that don't have programs like these, summer internships can provide a similar real-life work experience. Internships are a win-win for both parties. Students get essential work experience in their field and employers get to "try before buy" when making hiring decisions about offering full-time employment to new grads.
A generation ago, co-op or internship work experience was a nice-to-have. I think today it is mandatory. New graduates who have nothing more than the degree -- no matter how high their GPA or how prestigious their university -- are at a significant disadvantage relative to their peers, most of whom will have these co-op or internship work experiences on their resumes.
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resistion
11/27/2012 9:25 AM EST
Why not simply steer away from engineering since four years out is still not long enough to get us out of this mess.
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Brian Fuller2
11/27/2012 10:38 AM EST
Because I think we'll be out of this a little sooner and there are few career that propel the future like engineering. My 2 cents.
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resistion
11/27/2012 8:30 PM EST
Well there's always graduate school just in case.
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resistion
11/27/2012 9:29 AM EST
Programs outside STEM like the proverbial English literature should also require these job opportunity boosts.
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resistion
11/27/2012 8:34 PM EST
Don't assume applying students don't consider job prospects 4 years out, 5 years out, 10 years out.
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Bert22306
11/28/2012 4:28 PM EST
Maybe it's a good thing to have students get this "real world" experience, either as part of the course work, or as summer jobs. Maybe it looks good on their resume, looking for that first job.
But to be honest, when I was going to school, this sort of activity always made me feel like I was wasting precious time. It got me late in doing what I should have been doing, homework assignments, labs and lab reports, studying for that blasted exam. And it felt like I had to waste this time to fulfill some silly requirement.
Maybe just a personality thing. Even now, I am obsessive about feeling like I'm on top of what I'm responsbile for. And I hate to spend time on what I consider useless distractions, to fulfill some arbitrary requirement imposed on us for the sake of some image thing.
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Frank Eory
11/28/2012 5:01 PM EST
I don't understand the wasting precious time comment. Working a summer job doing technical work at a prospective future employer, as opposed to what -- flipping burgers?
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Bert22306
11/28/2012 5:13 PM EST
No, of course not. I was not referring to summer jobs here. I was referring to courses which have you go off to some company in town, perhaps, for that "hands on" experience in industry, while you have two homework assignments, two lab reports, and a quiz to study for, for the next day.
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Bert22306
11/28/2012 4:32 PM EST
By the way, Sylvie, doing has always been part of an engineering curriculum. That's why engineering courses include such a large number of lab courses (like two lab courses per semester is common, which adds a whole lot of work for each of those courses). There's plenty of actual "doing" involved, even if the layman might not appreciate that.
So yeah, the universities make this more obvious now. I'm not really sure this helps, aside from image.
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