Engineering Careers Online

Last year, pink slips were seemingly everywhere for engineers and computer scientists, as the likes of Texas Instruments and Microsoft laid off employees in record numbers. Things are better for engineers this year, but the signals are still mixed. Tech companies plan to hire at least as many electrical engineers as last year, but those already laid off are having a hard time finding jobs. And while new grads are getting fewer offers, they’re doing better than their peers—according to a recent report, engineering degrees accounted for eight of the 10 highest paid degrees in the United States. [read full article at IEEE Spectrum]

Events such as the BP oil spill have prompted the creation of new engineering careers that focus on the prevention of accidents. As a result, some schools are creating engineering masters programs that can prepare students for these emerging positions.

For instance, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) recently created an online masters program in advanced safety engineering and management, The Birmingham News reports. [read full article at GradView]

Significant numbers of today’s women and underrepresented minority chemists and chemical engineers (40 percent) say they were discouraged from pursuing a STEM career (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) at some point in their lives, according to a new Bayer Corporation survey.

U.S. colleges are cited by them as the leading place in the American education system where discouragement happens (60 percent) and college professors as the individuals most likely responsible for the discouragement (44 percent). [read full article at redOrbit]

Drexel University Online, a leader in online degree programs, has added a new online degree program to its offerings, the online Master of Science in Engineering Technology from Drexel’s Goodwin College.

The online master’s in Engineering Technology uses a professional, multi-disciplinary, team and project-oriented approach to graduate education. It focuses primarily on the applied aspects of the technological spectrum closest to product development and improvement, industrial practices, and engineering technology operation functions. It meets the needs of and provides the flexibility for graduate students who want to expand their knowledge through advanced engineering technology courses. It also provides the flexibility for graduate students to expand their knowledge in a specific technical specialty. [read full article at Yahoo! News]

Lockheed Martin, Manassas, recently introduced 89 female students from 17 local high schools to the world of engineering during the firm’s sixth annual “Women in Engineering Day” at its local facility. [read full article at InsideNova.com]

Auto ID Solutions has made a three year commitment to the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering’s STEPS (Science, Technology and Engineering Preview Summer camp for girls) program. This program is for girls entering the 7th grade who spend a week taking classes in plastics, electricity, machining, computer-aided design, assembly, web design, chemistry, physics, engineering, and robotics. [read full article at Yahoo! News]

Fluctuating funding for NASA could drive away highly specialized workers at a time when fewer students want to embark on careers in science, space industry officials warned a House panel Thursday.

“One of the reasons for a lack of interest in aerospace and defense could be the uncertainty of NASA programs,” Marion Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, told the House Science and Technology Committee. “A commitment to a robust human spaceflight program will help attract students and hold workers.” [read full article at Florida Today]

Funded with a $95,500 Champlin Foundations grant, the Structural Monitoring and Remote Testing (SMART) Laboratory includes the high-tech instrumentation and processing power necessary to measure and analyze structures in natural conditions, all contained in a van for easy access to sites around Rhode Island.

“The lab will enable students to work together in small groups designing experiments on challenging problems related to structural health monitoring, and then gain experience obtaining real-world measurements that can be applied in their future careers,” explained Mayrai Gindy, associate professor of civil engineering who developed the mobile lab. [read full article at PhysOrg.com]

Four steps.

Eight years.

Two exams.

It all adds up to what Ben O’Neal, engineering professor, calls two “pretty exhausting” eight-hour exams.

After four years of undergraduate coursework, engineering students encounter additional education and practice for another four years before acquiring a professional engineer license. [read full article at TechnicianOnline.com]

A program at Case Western Reserve University to encourage career advancement of women and underrepresented minority men in sciences and engineering is expanding to five public institutions of higher education through a three-year, nearly $1 million National Science Foundation grant.

Institutions Developing Excellence in Academic Leadership (IDEAL) brings together CWRU and five public research universities across Northern Ohio: Bowling Green State University, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron and the University of Toledo. The goal is to foster environments conducive to recruiting, advancing and retaining women and underrepresented minority faculty in science and engineering (S&E). [read full article at EurekAlert!]

Sustainable energy jobs are being created all over the US in efforts to conserve the planet’s dwindling fossil fuel resources.

The American Solar Energy Society predicts that by the year 2030, the number of green jobs available will skyrocket to 40 million, proposing one in four workers will be in a green energy job.

This trend has not gone unnoticed by universities. Programs featuring sustainable energy are popping up all over the country. The University of North Dakota is among these energy forward institutions, taking the initiative by creating the country’s first graduate studies program in Sustainable Energy Engineering (SEE). Around the world, the graduate degree is offered only at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, Aalborg University in Denmark, the University of Adelaide in Australia, and University of Sarajevo in Bosnia Herzegovina. [read full article at The Dakota Student]

While only one in 10 male engineers leave their field by the time they reach their 30s, about one in four women are not working in engineering despite having completed the necessary education.

A study getting under way at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) will explore the reasons for the relatively large gap between the number of women who obtain engineering degrees but leave the field or never enter, and those who pursue careers and remain. [read full article at EurekAlert!]

U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics. But that finding comes with a big caveat: Many of the highest-performing students are choosing careers in other fields. The study by professors at Rutgers and Georgetown suggests that since the late 1990s, many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting. [read full article at Yahoo! News]

One of the few Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence with an engineering thrust will be based at Virginia Tech with Howard University of Washington, D.C., as an academic partner.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the sponsor of these academic centers, made eight awards from the more than 40 proposals submitted for 2009. Virginia Tech and Howard are now among 21 CAE’s across the country. [read full article at The News Leader]

Tiny levers, cranks, joints and axles are dumped onto the table as sophomores at Paradise Valley’s Horizon High School
study how to piece together a miniature conveyor belt and universal joint.

As sophomore Jerry Trayer fiddled with the pieces and fit together the elbowlike joint, he explained why he is taking this pre-engineering course.

“I really wanted actual college credit,” said Trayer, of Scottsdale.

Now he and other students in this special engineering preparation program can get it.

Horizon High School became the fifth Arizona school
this month to obtain what is called “affiliate” certification by Project Lead the Way so students in its engineering-preparation program can earn college credit. [read full article at The Arizona Republic]