I was always looking for the best prepared ENGINEER. If you have extra time, take more engineering classes; prepare yourself better for your career. Show me that you really are interested in engineering. I was in structural engineering and well roundedness to me (as a hiring manager) was taking materials classes! I always had enough resumes to sort thru that, after round filing the business ones, I could rank them according to preparedness (number of classes and GPA) to the job I was offering.
My college requirements had a humanities element to it that provided that formal well roundedness (I did photography, economics, literature, etc.). You can do things outside the classroom that also help develop you as a person while you are in college and afterwards.
It is always good to bounce your thoughts and ideas against your peers. But do remember that your peers may not have the experience or knowledge to provide accurate responses. When one is young, you have a lot of choices and it seems so limiting to delve into one area so deeply to the exclusion of other areas. Many of the young students I have meet therefore seemed concerned about that well roundedness even when it was counterproductive to developing themselves as professionals.
For a field like engineering, the devil is in the details (as quoted from “The Italian Job”). Little details can mean the difference between success and failure. The more knowledge you have in your field the better.
@HPuck35 thank you! I will keep that in mind to try and take as many relevant engineering classes I can on top of my curriculum when time permits. In your opinion, how many “extra” classes in say economics/humanities courses become a red flag for a hiring manager? I want to study as much economics as I can without it sending the wrong message that I don’t care as much for engineering. That’s the last thing I want to rub off on a manager. I have a lot of AP credit so I want to see what my schedule can handle.
It’s much more acceptable to have a “minor” in business for an Industrial Engineer, than say a structural or Aerospace engineer. Most Industrials have to take several business related classes, so a few more and calling it a minor isn’t anything out of the norm.
And I don’t think anyone is holding our humanities/social science electives against us…got to love my “Theatre Appreciation” class and my “Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents” anthropology class.
Gotcha…I will keep an open mind to taking a class or two that interests me but after thinking what @HPuck35 said I should stay focused on getting as much related education possible in engineering. Since I am getting more interested in the idea of co-op, I want to be as prepared as possible.
" I am getting more interested in the idea of co-op," - Good plan! I had 2 summer internships (30 years ago, when less common.) It was really helpful. But longer assignments are even better, if you can make that work.
DD is a CS major in engineering. She has some extra credits available and added a math minor and is now working on a statistics minor. I think those are useful and related.
One thing I appreciated with doing a gap year to work full-time was being able to respect what it means to have a job. It puts skin in the game and I like the balance between school and working. That’s why coop’s sounds like a great fit for me personally. I just hope that in pursuing a few extra electives that it doesn’t affect my chances.
Humanities and social studies courses per se probably would not be a red flag (unless there were lots of business courses as mentioned that could signal an interest in using engineering as merely a stepping stone to management), but those hiring new graduates will likely look at which engineering courses you took. So if your schedule includes free elective space, and there are additional engineering electives that relate to your career interests, they may be more relevant to getting hired than additional humanities and social studies courses would be.
This is not to say that additional humanities and social studies courses are worthless, but their value in engineering career aspects tends to be more indirect. For example, knowledge from sociology courses may help understand workplace interaction, knowledge from economics courses may help understand how products and services you are designing may be bought and sold in the economy, knowledge from political science courses may help understand politics as it sometimes affects engineering problems, and knowledge of art may help understand aesthetic issues that can be significant in a product’s acceptance in the marketplace.
Typical humanities and social studies requirements for engineering majors are around 20-25% of the curriculum (looks like 6+9+9 = 24 credits = 20% of a total of 120 credits at the University of Alabama: http://courseleaf.ua.edu/introduction/academicpolicies/corecurriculumgeneraleducationrequirements/ ). It looks like economics courses can be used for the 9 credits of social studies that are part of these requirements. You probably need EC 110, 111, 308, and perhaps 309 before taking other economics courses, so courses beyond the first three would need to be taken as free electives, if you have any space for those. However, the AP economics exams with score of 4 can waive 110 or 111, allowing you to go directly to the more advanced courses.
With all of this being said, being a Systems/Industrial Engineer, would an Economics minor or Operations and Supply Chain Management minor hurt my chances of getting a job in the long run? I already have a math minor as well.
@ucbalumnus I actually got a 5 on AP Macro and have completed my entire social/behavior science requirements at Bama. Essentially any more economic courses would be purely add-on electives…that’s why I am trying to gauge where to stop and focus on more engineering courses related to my degree. I definitely want to pursue at least Intro to Microeconomics, Intermediate Microeconomics, and Intermediate Macroeconomics. If at that point I can pursue more related engineering courses, I will be satisfied with my interests in economics. However people can chime in if this is too much and that I should limit myself.
Business minors with engineering degrees is a common topic on this board. Most (definitely including me) don’t want to see such a combination. Do realize where I am coming from when I make my comments. I worked for one of the large aerospace companies and we developed state of the art hardware for use in space. I definitely wanted the best technical minds I could find. I would hire about equal numbers of BS and MS degreed people with a few PhDs thrown in for good measure. And a number of my staff took time off to go back (with the company paying for their tuition) to get advanced degrees (PhDs or MS, if they didn’t have it already)
There are plenty of other companies and career paths that may be able to include more business aspects into engineering. Those jobs can be more customer (read sales) type interactions and not a lot of cutting edge engineering. But even in those environments, one really needs to understand the engineering side and that takes years of experience to master. By that time, your business skills may have eroded quite a bit. IMHO, you are better to concentrate on engineering first and then as you need the business skills, go back and acquire them.
Also realize that “engineering management” is a combination of engineering and PEOPLE management. Not the type skills taught in the typical business school program. Many companies, including where I worked, offered after hours classes that would give you those people skills. In fact, my company started to require that one complete a number of those classes before they would even consider you for an engineering management position.
The bottom line though is that there is no definitive number of classes outside of engineering that will exclude you from pursing a career in engineering. One needs to decide what their career path will be like and prepare themselves the best they can to enter and do well in that career path. As stated above, that path may include additional schooling (business or engineering) down the road once you have started working. The best advice will come from professionals that are already well into that specific career path, not typically from one’s college peers who have little or no experience in the work a day world (and internships are typically not real good indicators of that work a day world but just really long job interviews).
Thank you @HPuck35 for the response. I respect where you are coming at and it’s a wake up from my initial thoughts of double minoring in business and economics. I see now that I don’t need a minor necessarily to pursue a passion or interest. Thinking over the last few days I realize that it would be more beneficial to pursue a research program through my college to complement my engineering program. Maybe 2-3 economics classes on top to spice up an interest of mine but that’s about it. Thanks for the thought candy!
@HPuck35 I understand (and agree) with your point, but in this case, with the OP, it’s a little bit off point. Likely due to some confusion with how terms like Engineering Management and System Engineering are being used.
The OP’s course of study at UNC-Charlotte is titled “System Engineering” (and is ABET accredited), but it’s really a combination of Industrial Engineering, Business Management and Business Administration. It’s similar to a standard Industrial Engineering curriculum, but lighter on engineering and heavier in the other two facets.
Taking business and management courses are a requirement for this degree.
An economics minor is a plus, especially if you’re applying to a Financial company to do computer modeling. A supply chain management minor would be a plus, especially if applying to a transportation or retail company. While neither minor would make much sense for a mechanical or civil engineering student, they do for a UNCC “System” engineer.
In the case of “Engineering Management”, as it relates to the OPs major, it’s not about managing a team. It’s about designing, building and managing a process. Here is one definition:
Engineering management is concerned with the design, improvement, and management of integrated systems of people, materials, equipment, and money. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, social, and management sciences, together with the principles and the methods of engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems.
I agree with @HPuck35. My son will be graduating next month with a undergrad in Mechanical Eng. But he also took systems, electrical, computer science, and aero classes. He didn’t worry about the minor… Anyway he landed a job with a prestigious company with good money because they like that he has a base knowledge of so many things. He took a variety for knowledge and interest but Its a great selling point and a great way to stand out among your peers…
though i suppose if you want to be more business than technical then stick to more business classes. I know someone who graduated years ago in Systems Eng. as undergrad then did an MBA once they were working.
Yes, some people get into engineering and then veer toward the business side of things, being it marketing or moving up the corporate ladder. In those cases an MBA makes sense since they will actually use it and they are, in effect, leaving engineering for the “dark side”.
