<p>Just curious, what are people in their first year engineering classes learning or doing? (Just the engineering classes, not physics, chemistry etc...).</p>
<p>At USC. I’m a Freshman in Biomedical Engineering and I finished my first semester about three weeks ago. Each engineering major (even undeclared engr) has an intro class you take in the first year. Most are first semester, like mine, though some are second like Chem E (as you take general chem first semester).
So Intro to BME was pretty tough, for me, but a lot of people did very well in that class. It’s said that the class isn’t really something that helps you, but it gets you in the general line of thought for future engineering courses. But at least it’s a class, instead of waiting for soph year like other universities. :)</p>
<p>Alright because the stuff I’m doing in my engineering class seems to be pretty easy and basic stuff, I’m not sure if that’s because my school’s easier or what.</p>
<p>In most schools, there are no first year engineering courses. Most engineering students are taking a schedule this is primarily just calculus, lab sciences, cs courses, and humanities/social science/English required courses. The engineering classes start in the sophomore year.</p>
<p>Some schools do offer a freshman “intro” course which is more of an introduction to the field than a core engineering course. Students learn about careers, learn basic techniques or how to solve basic problems, etc. Those classes are intended for students that are trying to figure out if a certain engineering major is right for them.</p>
<p>My son’s first quarter at Cal Poly slo engineering courses included, 1) careers in BRAE, 2) engineering design graphics, 3) engineering surveying (a 200s course). This winter quarter, he has a CAD class and an intro to Lab skills and safety class (i.e. intro to fabrication and construction materials in engineering).</p>
<p>It’s the nature of Cal Poly’s “learn by doing” motto. You get engineering classes right off the bat.</p>
<p><rant></rant></p>
<p>I really dislike that “learning by doing” mentality. It teaches people cause and effect relationships rather than theoretical underpinnings of a phenomenon. As a result, it leads to inferior engineers. The shift from first principals to teaching by simulation is exactly why engineers in the 60’s using sliderules could easily out-design today’s graduates with a TI-92 and a laptop running Maple.</p>
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<p>I think one of the problems with teaching from first principles nowadays is they’re expecting you to use that TI-92 and laptop running Maple to solve the problems. It makes you develop a dependency upon the technology to do even the most rudimentary problems you should be able to do without. So it might not be the method of teaching which is poor, but the method of doing problems which they’re trying to teach. I’ve actually lost points on assignments a number of times by doing good estimation practices and whatnot instead of relying upon whatever a piece of software prints out.</p>
<p>I go to UCI and my first year was mainly physics, math, and a little bit of chemistry. The only closest thing to an engineering class was an introduction to Fortran. Generally, first year courses in engineering are physics and math because those are the fundamentals; without those, you will be lost once you start engineering classes because everything is built upon those concepts. </p>
<p>I’m currently a second year so all my engineering classes are starting to pile up. I’m now done with my physics and I just have a bit of math remaining because I have been holding those off for a bit. Wow Cal Poly is ahead; I don’t even start touching Auto Cad until Spring Quarter.</p>
<p>“I really dislike that “learning by doing” mentality. It teaches people cause and effect relationships rather than theoretical underpinnings of a phenomenon. As a result, it leads to inferior engineers. The shift from first principals to teaching by simulation is exactly why engineers in the 60’s using sliderules could easily out-design today’s graduates with a TI-92 and a laptop running Maple.”</p>
<p>That is such a stupid statement.</p>
<p>Do you think companies give a damn about how much theory you want? Not really, they want their products made, and they want them done fast. Obviously someone hasn’t had a job in this field.</p>
<p>They don’t want engineers to design some super hard and complex design system when it can easily be made with less parts and in less time. This would require someone who has knowledge of tools and doing hands on experience. Ex. weld or create some complex design to avoid welding a part?</p>
<p>How could you even compare an engineer with 30+ years of experience to new grad?!</p>
<p>It seems a bit funny to me that you’re wanting to discourage innovation, duffman.</p>
<p>I don’t discourage it, it’s just that the poster I quoted lives in a fairy land on a gumdrop house in lollipop lanewhere companies toss money left and right for the hell of it and say go find me new discoveries. They want things done,but conceptual isn’t always what makes the world go.</p>
<p>If I tell someone to design a device that will cut my grass, I don’t give a rats arse about gausses law or magnetic fields just get it done quickly, and get it done right.</p>
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<p>Actually, as someone that has hired hundreds of engineers over the years, I feel somewhat qualified to make an assessment.</p>
<p>I’ve also seen how industry works. Let’s say that you don’t go into R&D. Let’s say you work as a production engineer in a plant somewhere. And let’s say that you don’t even add value, you just firefight the entire time. </p>
<p>The easiest way to firefight a problem is to say “this pump isn’t work. Why do pumps stop working?” then to look up problems and fixes for those problems. However, operators in manufacturing plants aren’t idiots - after years of experience, they know the common faults and how to fix them. Usually, when an engineer is called, it’s a more serious issue. Perhaps there’s new material going through the pump. Perhaps someone modified something else (say upstream piping or some component of the material being pumped). Whatever it is, it’s usually not obvious and the only way to figure out those sorts of issues is to use first principals and start from basics. </p>
<p>But no one hires an engineer to firefight - people want process improvement. How do you improve existing processes? By the time most engineers get to a plant, all of the low hanging fruit is already addressed, so the opportunities arise in the more complicated issues. Perhaps the process is using an eductor and should have a vacuum pump. Perhaps Your control systems are designed inefficiently. Whatever it is, the only way to figure those sorts of things out is to start from the basics - fundamentally understand the process and what’s happening - then build outward. This thing that’s designed to do ABC: I could replace it, but it’s more efficient to figure out a way to not need ABC.</p>
<p>Very few engineers these days get to that level of understand and therefore a high level of accomplishment. So many people just want to show up and continue the status quo while making some minor change in some inconsequential part of the process (which they might not realize is inconsequential). Those people scramble to make it look like they’re fixing things, when in fact they’re probably making the system worse through neglect due to ignorance.</p>
<p>That’s a bad engineer. And with your attitude, that is you.</p>
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<p>This is a perfect example. If I tell you to design a device to cut my grass, you build something to cut my grass. </p>
<p>The first thing I’d ask: why is the grass growing and why does it need to be cut?</p>
<p>What else do you do besides R&D? Excel files all day long.</p>
<p>Why would you ask those questions? You didn’t major in philosophy, you’re their to design solutions to problems. Cosmetic or not. I’m not going to raise questions about why peanut butter taste better than honey.</p>
<p>I mostly agree with what GP said, but I think there is a place for learning by doing. If you’re only learning the underlying principles about something it can be hard to see how they inter-relate without some ‘learning by doing.’ For example, I just finished up a Materials Selection class. I’ve been taking Materials classes for two years, where I’ve learned the principles behind materials properties. The Selection class was almost entirely learning by doing, as it was completely based around the professor giving us a scenario (ex: I’m building a bicycle shelter) and we had to come up with what the best materials were for the application, why, and what could be done to improve the material. Even though we didn’t necessarily learn anything new in the class from a fundamentals or principles stand point, the class really helped us to see how everything fit together.</p>
<p>But like you said, the principles have to be there first, and learning how to plug everything into MatLab doesn’t teach you anything except how to plug things into MatLab. I guess if your job ends up being plugging things into MatLab, well, you’ve screwed up horribly at some point in your life.</p>
<p>And duffman, you’re vastly oversimplifying an engineers job. If someone comes up to you and tells you to design something to cut grass they don’t want you to hand them a machete at the end of the day. You’ve got to do it better than everybody else is, or you are worthless. People have been designing things to cut grass for a long time now, and more than you can imagine goes into the design of just the blade. Is the blade going to be angled? Will it have teeth in the back? How big do you want the teeth? With teeth of that size what material properties are necessary so that the teeth don’t become projectiles? At what angle must the teeth be for the grass to be thrown back up into the mowing apparatus instead of shot out, so that it will be mulched?</p>
<p>That’s maybe 5% of the questions you have to answer when designing one part of something to cut your grass. To figure out the answers you need to know the theory and principles of engineering. Even if you’re not doing product design and you’re just overseeing stuff your employer is going to want results, and results require innovation. If they didn’t they could hire someone far cheaper than you to do the work.</p>
<p>So now you got fired from the grass-cutting job and you’re working in a steel mill. You’re a bottom rung guy and one thing they ask you to keep an eye on is how hot the ladles are getting. You go out with a heat gun, measure it, plug it into the computer, make some pretty pictures and show it to your boss after a couple weeks. The resounding response you will get from that boss is going to be “So?” They couldn’t care less how hot the ladles are if it isn’t a problem, or if they can save money somehow. If you’ve got hot spots why do you have hot spots? Is that a problem? Will the metal in the hot spots going to expand, creating a sheer stress in the ladle which it cannot handle, causing the ladle to burst and molten metal to come pouring down on whoever is standing underneath? Can we save a little money by putting less insulation in?</p>
<p>Again, these are questions you can’t answer by plugging something into a computer. You have to have an intuitive feel for the subject matter, backed up by knowledge of fundamentals and principles, to perform effectively.</p>
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<p>Unless you’re building excel files that automate calculations, congratulations, you’re a process manager and not an engineer. You’d be surprised at the number of graduates from engineering schools aren’t actually engineers when they graduate (despite what their job description says). Usually it’s because they don’t know any better (apparently, like you).</p>
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<p>Anyone can built a lawnmower. Someone that wanted a new lawnmower could hire an experienced mechanic at half your salary and probably get a better lawnmower than you could make.</p>
<p>Your job is to fix the problem better than it has been fixed before. Many airports and military bases used to spend hundreds of thousands to trim the grass. At one point, they asked an engineer for a lawnmower and he gave them a goat. </p>
<p>One time in Houston, they built an indoor athletic facility. To allow grass to grow indoors, the facility was engineered to allow light in, it had a complex (and energy intensive) wind system to keep air flowing inside, and it had a complex (and expensive) watering and drainage system to allow the ideal amount of moisture to stay in the grass. The system caused severe glare, so the city hired a new engineer to redesign the systems to allow the grass to grow properly while not blinding players. Instead, of making a more complex system that only shielded light a portion of the time (which is what was requested), the engineer installed fake grass and saved millions over the life of the stadium.</p>
<p>But the point is that you don’t start building a lawnmower until you know that the lawnmower is the appropriate approach. Otherwise, you’re not adding value. </p>
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<p>You wouldn’t believe how many students graduate thinking that is engineering. They learn to use some simulation software and then expect their job to be plug and chug into that software to get answers. They don’t understand what they’re plugging in or how the software is getting an answer, they just know where certain things go. That doesn’t make you an engineer anymore than using WebMD to self-diagnose makes you a doctor. </p>
<p>By all means you can use software to simplify a calculation and get to an answer. But, fundamentally, you have to know how the software got that answer so you can double check the results. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been hired to go to a plant and fix a design error because someone used software irresponsibly. Handing software to a person with only a sophomoric knowledge of engineering (and that’s about the level of knowledge many graduates have) is like handing a loaded gun to a 12 year old to play with.</p>