During my son’s tour of the College of Engineering at UMich, the grad student (Civil Engineering major) conducting tour jokingly referred to the Industrial and Operational Engineering (IOE) Department as “Instead of Engineering”
However, while industrial engineers design services (processes, logistics, safety, finance, decision analytics, etc.) rather than products like most other engineers, these services, while often unseen, are highly important in many aspects of business and government.
The mechanical, electrical, and materials engineers may have designed the parts of something, but the industrial engineers may have designed the process and logistics of getting the parts put together into the product at a reasonable cost.
And the industrial engineers are eventually running the company, or advising others how to do so. The jokes are nice, and the IE’s are laughing all the way to the bank.
Some of the peer teasing can be funny but the University of Michigan engineering tour guide’s comments sound over the line . We had 3 engineering tours between both kids and heard nothing like that (and also looked at other programs online) in terms of actively ridiculing another major you are not a part of. That would have been a real turn off, especially since Michigan’s IE department is very highly rated (usually about number 2 after GT I think). Jokes are funny but guides representing the school need to have social skills and common sense. This guy was I assume not representing the CIVIL engineering department (and my H is a civil), he was representing the whole engineering department. But maybe the guide was an equal opportunity jokester about electrical, mechanical, chemical too? Believe it or not, there could be kids in his audience whose main interest is Industrial or he could have a parent in his audience that is an industrial and systems engineer. The good thing though is that it could give a kid a heads up about how they might be viewed once they hit campus. Industrial and systems is potentially a good choice for kids with math and science aptitude and good social skills, who want a flexible major. Lots of good opportunities in varied types of jobs- consulting, industry, government, research, etc. Luckily, most kids will gravitate to what they feel is the best fit in terms of engineering and ignore some of the nonsense that seems to go along with worrying about who the real engineers are and who are the “imaginary” ones.
The comment was in response to an annoying kid and his dad (graduate himself from GT Industrial Engineering) who were constantly interrupting the tour guide asking about job prospects for other COE majors and comparing UMICH to GT.
Well, I guess that civil engineer showed them then. 