Chemical Engineering - need thoughts regarding a disappointing visit

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
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<p>DD and I made the 6 hour trip to Tuscaloosa a couple of weeks ago for our first campus visit to UA. For most of the day, she was in love with everything about the university. The campus itself is gorgeous, we had great meetings with the Honors College and a Greek ambassador, and DD was so excited that she was talking about making her enrollment deposit and housing application.</p>

<p>Our last meeting was with a faculty member from the Chemical Engineering department, and it totally changed our perspective (not for the better). Everything about the meeting was negative…he said there are very limited undergrad research opportunities due to the small faculty size & the ones they do have are highly competitive, that she needs to stay in her home state if she was interested in medical school, that they don’t have very many engineering electives, that internships are a thing of the past and employers only want co-op experience, that he’s not a fan of the STEM/MBA program, that he disagreed with some advice that the Dean had given a potential student who was also in our same meeting, and that DD might want to stay with a couple of her other school choices or consider UAB if she wanted a biomedical/biological focus. </p>

<p>She was so disappointed after the meeting. Can anyone who is familiar with the chemical engineering program give me some insight? I certainly don’t want her to end up at a school that’s not right for her (regardless of how amazingly lovely the campus is :), but I would hate for her to rule out UA based upon that one encounter if maybe things aren’t quite as bleak as he made it out to be.</p>

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<p>I hope others who know more will respond, but I will say that Engineering PhDs are not known for their interpersonal skills! Maybe your daughter could ask about speaking to current students in a phone call to learn more.</p>

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<p>Good point :slight_smile:
Excellent idea…I’ll have her look into that!</p>

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<p>I’m very sorry you had this experience. I think I’d go back to the Dean and discuss this professor’s advice. I’ll bet he’d be VERY interested. All I know is that my orthopaedic surgeon (he replaced both knees 12 years ago) majored in chemical engineering at UA. He is with the Andrews Sports Medicine in Birmingham and is the UA football team’s ortho.</p>

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<p>You’re in luck. Our unofficial leader, mom2collegekids, has son who graduated UA chemical engineering and is now in med school. I’m sure she’ll be along shortly to weigh in.</p>

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<p>Hoping you get some more specific responses from families with firsthand experience, @rainho, but regarding “Engineerng PhDs,” in general, my son and I met with one from the mechanical engineering department when we visited UA last spring, and he not only sold my son on engineering in general, he really got him interested specifically in ME.</p>

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<p>We went to a local event for high achieving kids and I honestly thought one of the speakers was the football coach. He was energized and a great speaker. Later that night I discovered that he was not but I think the dean of the engineering school. We spoke to him about a different engineering department and I came away from that night with a very high opinion. I would call and ask to speak with the dean. Maybe the professor was having a bad day. I would definitely look into this more.</p>

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<p>Was t it one of the older (Lane, Arnold, April?) or younger professors (Brazel, Ritchie, Turner?) you met with? Our ChemE dept is a mess right now from what I hear from my friend on the alumni advisory board.</p>

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<p>My daughter is a junior chemical engineering major from Colorado. She has been conducting cancer stem cell research at Bama since the summer after her freshman year. This year she is the first author on a paper (currently submitted) and second author on another two. She attended and presented in San Antonio last month at the national BioMedical Engineering Society Annual Conference. Just this past weekend she presented her research at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in Atlanta and won 1st place for her poster. Both trips were supported by and paid for by the university. Last year she received the prestegious Randall Undergraduate Research Award. Your daughter can be whatever she wants to be at Bama-the world is her oyster at Bama. Roll Tide!</p>

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<p>Our first visit to campus was over my son’s high school fall break. It just so happened that it was also UA’s fall break that year. We met with a prof in the civil engineering department and the visit was just…odd. It was apparent that he didn’t normally meet with students and families. Most of the meeting he encouraged us to consider a different school, which wasn’t quite what I expected after driving 500 miles. He also enthusiastically told us about a great new program that they were using in the department…that my son was already using in high school. He explained that the only students that were able to get internships were ones that had personal connections. The only thing that kept UA in consideration was the AWESOME meeting we’d had with the honors college. We decided to give it a second chance and returned for another visit and met with the department head. The meeting was entirely different. He presented the school much more positively and was able to answer questions much more effectively. I definitely believe in second chances. And my son is now a civ-e student at Bama.</p>

<p>That said, just my perspective/opinion, but I do agree with a couple things you were told. It is true that many businesses are going away from internships and offering more co-ops. That’s not just at UA, that’s nationwide. A student employee is a big investment for a business in the amount of training required. Many businesses don’t want to invest in interns that may only be there 10-12 weeks. With a co-op, students return to the same business for multiple work sessions, so the business gets a bigger return on their investment. There are still internships out there and my son was able to find an internship after his freshman year (with no personal connections), but it is true that co-ops are becoming more popular with all businesses.</p>

<p>Also I personally am not a fan of the STEM/MBA program. I completed my MBA about 3 years ago now. The school I attended did not accept anyone who did not have at least 2 years of professional work experience. Many MBA programs seek out students that have professional experience. An MBA is a very high level overview of many facets of business and having professional experience enables students to get much more out of the experience. I have also read that it is sometimes more difficult for new graduates to get engineering jobs when they graduate with an MBA because businesses will view them as a transitional employee who is only seeking to move into management and not as someone who is committed to an engineering role. That, of course, isn’t true for all employers, but seems that it could be true for some. We didn’t consider the STEM/MBA for my son, but instead are considering the UA Scholars program where he can take courses towards his MS during his undergrad years. </p>

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<p>Emerging Scholars and CBH both offer research opportunities.</p>

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<p>Every academic department has at least one or two profs with great personalities who are trotted out for visiting student day, and it is rare that someone without good glad handing skills would ever be appointed Dean. Sounds like the engineering prof who the OP met with wasn’t the best ambassador for the program.</p>

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<p>My son was a ChemE major at Bama and is now a MS2 (second year med student).</p>

<p>this prof sounds like he’s off his rocker. Or maybe he’s been recently overlooked for a promotion or tenure and he’s in a bad mood.</p>

<p>Who was this? Can you pm me his name?</p>

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he said there are very limited undergrad research opportunities due to the small faculty size</p>

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<p>Smalll faculty size? The chemE dept is a good size. </p>

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<p>Well of course research opps are limited (they aren’t infinite), but each STEM prof is doing some kind of research.</p>

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<p>^^ The above advice is very strange. Bama boasts a HIGHER med school acceptance rate for OOS students. For instate students, med school acceptance is about 80%. For OOS students it is 85%. OOS Bama premeds are not having trouble getting into med school…at all. </p>

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<p>I will need to check this, but there are electives. What does this guy consider to be “many”? And ChemE students don’t have room in their schedules for “many” anyway. Plus a premed ChemE has even less room, because now there are more premed prereqs. </p>

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<p>Internships are not a “thing of the past” and if they were, that would affect all univs, not just Bama. Yes, there probably are some employers that prefer co-ops, but there are some employers that only do internships and don’t do co-ops.<br>
(besides, a chemE premed really doesn’t have to do any co-ops or internships. He/she can do REUs and other medically-related ECs which med schools like just as much.)</p>

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<p>the above, in my mind, really gives away this prof. He’s a super-negative person. He’s “not a fan of the STEM/MBA program”…lol…it’s new, it’s too new to even have an opinion yet. The fact that he is already negative speaks volumes to me. </p>

<p><<<< consider UAB if she wanted a biomedical/biological focus.>>>></p>

<p>lol…uh, UAB is in the state of Alabama…so if she should go to school in her own state, how does the above square.</p>

<p>And, frankly, BioMedE is way too risky of a major…especially for a premed. What if the student never goes to med school? Or what if the student doesn’t get “grad school qualifed” grades? What is he/she going to do with a biomedE degree? Few employers will hire a BS BioMedE. however, if the student has a ChemE or MechE degree, he/she can get a job.</p>

<p>I suggest that you contact Dr. Wiest. He will be able to provide more accurate info.
<a href=“mailto:jwiest@eng.ua.edu”>jwiest@eng.ua.edu</a></p>

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<p>Since so many prospective ChemE students have had such wonderful experiences speaking with faculty, this situation is such a weird outlier.</p>

<p>the ChemE dept is growing and likely has had some growing pains. It did have a dept head issue (the wrong person had been selected as Dept Head), but that has been resolved and there is good one now in place.</p>

<p>I suggest that you also contact Dr. John Van Zee, the dept head
<a href=“mailto:jwvanzee@eng.ua.edu”>jwvanzee@eng.ua.edu</a></p>

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<p>Like post #9 above and the OP’s experience, our visit was similar way back in 2011…and I’m SOOOOOO glad my S found a way to combat the negative feelings from 1 meeting w/ 1 poor person throughout the 3 (!) days we were there. We had an excellent time right up until a meeting w/ someone who undid the entire visit within the first 5 minutes of talking with us. He basically said similar things: there are no internships for aerospace students; there are limited jobs for aerospace engineers; he can’t place aero graduates in the industry (and couldn’t remember the last time he had done so); aerospace is a dying industry (ha!); etc. It completely deflated my S about going to UA in the first place, and really rocked his core passion for even pursuing an aerospace engineering career. It was that bad.</p>

<p>FORTUNATELY, the next morning, right before our departure, I suggested that we visit the Ferg, where there was a University Days tour starting. All of the tables were set up with student ambassadors and representatives from each major/college, and you could wander around to talk with them. While I went off to find some free tchotchke to take home to make myself feel better…my S just by chance happened to see some aerospace engineering students he had met the previous day, and he told them of his poor experience w/ Mr. “X”…and they proceeded to completely negate the negative about UA, about the department, and about careers in aerospace. Yes, you do have to find internships and co-ops on your own (at least in aero); yes, you do have to work harder at getting yourself out there into the workforce, coming from a small program such as aero at UA…but these students told my S not to listen to the old man and reassured my S that THEY were thriving at UA. </p>

<p>Try to read (in a positive way, or at least in a neutral way) what that professor was really saying, as jrcsmom suggests, instead of it being all negative. When I look back on my S’s meeting, I can see where that Mr. “X” was coming from (altho we didn’t like what we heard at the time). He was probably trying to be helpful in suggesting that my S try some other things other than aero (e.g., add an ME minor or take some business classes to become more marketable out in the workplace). My S interpreted it all the wrong way; and Mr “X” <em>completely</em> underestimated just how determined and passionate my S would be at succeeding in his chosen field! </p>

<p>The rest is history. I’m not going to bore you with all of the magnificent things my S is doing right now and that he has managed to accomplish to date at UA (it would truly sound so over the top). Success can often be found at the intersection of opportunity and luck. It is not merely by chance, however, that so many students at UA are doing amazing things. The smart, savvy, determined ones are rising to the top, and there are plenty of rungs on that ladder to help any students who want to climb to their success.</p>

<p>It is wise to check out your feelings, and perhaps UA is not the right place for your D. But do check out your feelings with others. CC is the place to get some great advice and different perspectives. Good luck with your decision!</p>

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<p>Another parent of a Junior ChemE, and PreMed, student here. I have heard nothing from DS that would back any of the statements of the prof you met with. I will verify M2CK’s statement on the REU’s, if a student is PreMed then REU’s will be of more value than a traditional internship. Internships are good if a student is looking to go into the business world as you can show at least some experience, but research experience will be of more value for post grad work or medical school.</p>

<p>To that end I can say that DS has had no problems at all from a research perspective. He decided to go the Emerging Scholars route and has been in the same Biology lab since Christmas of his freshman year doing Toxicity studies on Nanoparticles. During the summer of his freshman year he was accepted into the HHMI program (with Sniner’s DD) to stay on campus and continue the research. During the summer of his sophomore year he was accepted into the DAAD Rise program and did Nanoparticle research at the University of Cologne in Germany. So he has had no issues finding research opportunities at/through Bama. </p>

<p>Competitive? YES…welcome to the world of PreMed and preparing for med school admissions, there aren’t many lightweights applying for these programs…</p>

<p>As for the STEM/MBA program I am not even sure why it would have come up in the conversation. Since your daughter is looking at premed why would she be looking at a MBA? You should look closer at the University Scholars program. DS is participating in that and is working his Masters in Biology as he completes his undergrad degrees. I would think that a Masters in a STEM field would be a better fit for premed than a Masters in Business. </p>

<p>PM me if you have any specific questions.</p>

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<p>I think the fact that this thread has been a “lone-post” of a disappointing visit due to some odd prof is simply an indication that this was the exception.</p>

<p>My son was in ChemE during the time that there was an odd Dept Head issue, but even with that, that had no effect on coursework, getting classes, or anything like that. That Dept Head has been replaced and the current head is quite competent.</p>

<p>I hope the OP messages me with the name of this oddball prof. </p>

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<p>Thanks to everyone for the very helpful responses. After reading all the replies, I think I have a more accurate idea of the program now, so I’ll chalk our odd meeting up to the prof having a bad day. </p>

<p>DD has already been in touch with a senior ChemE student who echoed everything y’all said, plus our area recruiter was at our college night the other evening and is putting us in touch with someone else in the department for us to reach out to if we need additional information.</p>

<p>Regarding why the STEM/MBA program came up…there was another family in the same meeting with us, and their son mentioned the program, not my DD. That’s not really an interest of hers at this point.</p>

<p>M2CK, I’ll PM you.</p>

<p>Again, I really appreciate everyone’s input!</p>

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<p>Just wanted to let this thread know that 3 of the 4 Goldwater Scholar Finalists for UA this year are
ChemE’s. </p>

<p>The research and mentoring at UA is off the charts. My DD does real independent research not a grad students grunt work. </p>

<p>Roll Tide</p>

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<p>rainh2o My DD is a freshman Chem E, OOS. She has had a completely difference experience. Is doing Stem MBA, didn’t get Emerging Scholars, but applied for and was accepted to a Chemistry professor research group and getting good lab experience. We had an ok interview with a young ChemE professor, Ok but not outstanding. What sold us was the size of the dept…growing, able to graduate in 4 years, and DH met a Chem E professor (Dr. Bara) that sold him on the opportunities for smart kids. As with any field, internships will depend upon her resume and how much she networks for it. Is participating in SEA, Student Engineers in Action and American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Honors College, and a couple of others. ChemE is a challenging major anywhere, combined with premed, doesn’t leave much open for exploration outside of the requirements, but DD doesn’t need or want that. Very pleased with our decision for Alabama. </p>