Engineering Careers Online

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!]