Design Engineer

I want to pursue a career as a Design Engineer in creating electronic devices such as cameras, etc. I am willing to have 2 majors and 3 minors. What majors and minors should I consider taking? I am considering taking Electrical Engineering and Mechatronics Engineering as my majors and my 3 minors in Robotics , Mathematics and Business Management. Would those be good ?

@Mowererca Less is more. That applies to college majors and as a practicing engineer. All you need is an EE degree if you wanna really do optics or cameras. Photonics is a huge area of EE. Of course the casing and mechanics are done by mech Es but one person won’t do both. Engineering teams are interdisciplinary. Business won’t help you can easily move into management from engineering. It’s arguable minors aren’t worth anything

Students jumping into this realm think they want to design the whole thing. That is EXTREMELY rare. Engineers design ever increasing parts of things. Apple has hundreds of engineers working on the iPhone camera alone. Follow what @10s4life said. Go deeper, not broader. Good luck.

To echo: DEPTH!!! The last person to design a camera solo was probably 50 years ago. One person trying it now would take so long to make anything interesting that every component would be obsolete long before they were done.

Start with EE and explore it in depth. Maybe aim for a grad degree once you know your focus (ha ha), but not before. Selected extra math coursework is a good idea, but probably not to the extent of a minor - most undergrad programs barely scratch the surface of photonics even with electives, so it would be better to have a few grad courses.

Breadth is of interest only in systems engineering and non-design fields. Design wants depth.

Depending on where you go and your specific angle of intetest, you may also want to look at a mechatronics concentration of ME.

As for math, one of my son’s favorites, recommended by @boneh3ad was Numerical Methods.

Do not do a business minor. It dilutes your major and shows employers you don’t really want to be an engineer. The rare exception is IE which you don’t want to do anyway. Most other minors will also be useless because they dilute your major. There are also rare examples where this is not the case, aerospace minor with a ME major at a school that doesn’t offer a full fledged ABET accredited AE degree.

What is your home state and what schools are you looking at?

Numerical Methods? Why is do you need to take Numerical Methods? Again, engineering is not mathematics or physical sciences. If you want to go that deep into math why don’t you just major in mathematics or science instead of engineering? For some engineering majors all you need to take up to is differential equations. Linear algebra is not required for some engineering programs like engineering management.

That is not true!! Having other minors could make you more marketable to employers. Especially if an employer is looking for someone that speaks more than one language.

Why does it matter? Aerospace Engineers are not required to have a license anyways. I have never met any Aerospace Engineer with an Aerospace Engineering degree in the defense and space industry with a PE in Aerospace Engineering. A Professional Engineering License is not required in the space business.

First, a lot of engineering programs are starting to require numerical methods, so contrary to your assertion, they must deem it important. Second, modern engineering relies on using computers for the solution to complex problems. We no longer use a slide rule and integral tables. This, numerical methods are useful for engineers.

Engineering management is not engineering, so it’s hardly a good example to pick. Most engineering programs these days do require some kind of linear algebra component, either as a standalone class or as a unit within a larger class. It is very broadly applicable.

This can happen but is the exception rather than the rule. In most cases, you’re better off taking more technical courses than a minor. Also, a minor in a foreign language has little to do with fluency in that language. If a job wants foreign language proficiency in an applicant, that’s not going to be a required credential.

Who mentioned anything about being a PE? My comment was supporting the idea that OCCASIONALLY minors do make sense. An AE minor with a ME major at a school that doesn’t offer an AE major, for a person who wants to be an AE is one example. It’s also not a broad statement about the aerospace industry. People with all sorts of degrees work in the industry.

Often, engineers have the math credits for a minor but the engineering school only lets students declare a math major. You mentioned working on cameras. Signal processing requires advanced math beyond the EE core.

CS is worth a minor or whatever courses you can add. Your skills will be most important but it is likely that you will complete minor requirements when taking prereqs for upper level CS courses. Mechatronics/robotics is a concentration not an undergrad major at almost all schools.

Taking Econ, Entrepreneurial, engineering economics, project mgt, classes are helpful for any job in a start up, matrix organization, design engineer and in your real life. Some engineering schools have awesome options. Don’t discount their value or be afraid to learn about patent law, health policy or anything else in the field you want to work. Just don’t worry about a minor and find your passion first during your

Firstly, there are Engineering Management program that are Engineering Accreditation Commission ABET accredited. Secondly, you can’t have it both ways. A program that is NOT Engineering Accreditation Commission ABET accredit you say is NOT engineering. A program that is accredited by ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission you still say it is NOT engineering. You have to make up your mind and choose one.

For Example:

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
and 15 schools came up at abet.org for ABET-Accredited Engineering Management Programs

Are three schools that have Engineering Management program that are Engineering Accreditation Commission ABET accredited. I doubt that they required Linear Algebra.

My point was that ABET accreditation is unnecessary and not needed for this type of engineering major or whatever you want to call it.

This discussion has never been about PE or accreditation.

As long as we are on the topic of ABET though, they accredit many non-engineering degrees. Engineering is but a piece of what they do. If you’d like to know more, there’s a link below.

https://www.abet.org/accreditation/what-is-accreditation/what-programs-does-abet-accredit/

I don’t honestly care who accredits it. It’s not a true engineering degree. It’s purpose is to mint managers, not engineers. It’s got some engineering flavor, sure.

I never said that and I’m not sure why you’re suggesting I did.

You’ve completely missed the point. I said that engineering management is not really engineering (or at very best, is an real outlier amongst engineers) since it is not attempting to educate engineers. It should not be used as an example to try and prove or disprove a rule about engineering writ large.

The bottom line is that linear algebra and numerical methods are both very useful for a modern engineer.