Engineering Careers Online

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]

The accomplishments of ten outstanding educators from across the United States have been recognized with the “Building the Future Award” by the SME Education Foundation and their industry partner, 3M for their efforts in furthering excellence in science, technology, engineering and math education based on Project Lead The Way® curriculum and inspiring students to pursue technical careers. [read full article at ThomasNet News]

Young Alaska Natives from small rural communities are showing they can excel in advanced university engineering and science programs, overcoming the handicaps of scarce resources in village schools.

The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, or ANSEP, started in 1995, and since 2002, the University of Alaska has graduated 149 Native engineers and scientists, a substantial contribution to the state’s skilled professional workforce. [read full article at The Alaska Journal of Commerce]

Can children who do not know how many sides a triangle has get excited about learning math and engineering? Maybe a field trip to an amusement park will do the trick.

That is the idea behind a new initiative from Disney and Raytheon to let children design their own theme-park ride using math tools and then hop in a robotic simulator to try it out. [read full article at The New York Times]

The unemployment rate for U.S. electrical and electronics engineers (EEs), which had jumped to a record high in the second quarter, has eased, according to third quarter data just released by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the engineering profession as a whole, the rate continued to climb, but more slowly.

The jobless rate for EEs dropped from 8.6 percent in the second quarter to 7.3 percent in the third. Quarter to quarter, the EE workforce grew by 26,000. [read full article at EurekAlert!]