Engineering Tech is a good choice to consider. That said, there are options in engineering that build and test AND do high level theory based work. My son has a job like that.
My D went to RIT and loved it. But she was somewhat the opposite of your kid. She could have gone the STEM or art route but knew art was where her passions lay. She picked RIT because she wanted to major in Industrial Design and they have a great program. Plus they offered a number of STEM classes that she could take to as well though she ended up doing a minor in ASL and Deaf Cultural Studies.
I do remember very clearly when we went for a campus visit there was a student panel discussing RIT. One of the presenters was an engineering major (I don’t recall what kind) but had taken enough classes for a minor in glass. D was hoping to meet up with him some day but I’m not sure that ever happened as that was the kind of kids she liked to hang out with. She did find a large group of like-minded students.
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It’s a long shot, but check out Kansas State’s Interior Architecture and Industrial Design department. We looked at the Architecture program there when my son was looking, but the projects from the IAID department blew me away. My son ended up at Cal Poly, but we both had a very positive feeling about KState.
https://apdesign.k-state.edu/iaid/student-work/index.html#ID
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There are some fantastic suggestions here (particularly by @AustenNut, thanks). I’m not an engineer or a product person, so I’ll just share one thing. My wife is a fine artist (printmaker and now painter)with art degrees. In addition, she is superb at making things and creating things. If she wanted to and if she could find a business partner, she could have made a career creating products. I think I mentioned in another thread that she started going down the road with some really interesting handbags and had someone she thought would be a business partner and they showed her ideas to Neiman Marcus that asked to make a big order (only to find out that the business partner thought she should be on the creative side and was expecting ShawWife to do the business side too).
I think one could learn a lot about structure while studying sculpture as part of a BFA or MFA. I wonder if structural engineering would be doable/interesting without being so competitive.
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