D17 is very interested in a design engineering degree. We are visiting Northwestern next week. I’d love some feedback from students or parents of students who are in the MaDE Program. What type of jobs are available with this type of degree? My D17 is interested in being part of the design process (as an engineer), not a mechanical engineer.
II I am not mistaken, a poster here @thatrunnerkid is in the MaDE program.
That’s right, @osuprof
Since I’m a current student (finishing up a junior year abroad) and have neither been applying for jobs yet nor nor made that many contacts with people in years above me in my major, I’m not exactly sure about what jobs people get. However, my advisor mentioned that some NU MaDE grads go to work for Ideo, a major design consulting firm. Starting late this summer, I’m going to be looking at design consultancies and other companies where I’d be doing either product/service design or design research, but I have no idea where I’ll land.
Since I’ve been studying abroad this entire year, so I haven’t been able to take many of the design engineering classes offered in the Segal Design Institute, but I’m looking forward to taking them next year. Most of the courses students take in the first two years are introductory courses in math, science, and engineering. All McCormick students, however, take Design Thinking and Communication (DTC), basically an intro to design engineering, in their first and either second or third quarters (http://segal.northwestern.edu/programs/undergraduate/design-thinking-communication/index.html). It’s what got me hooked on design engineering. You can take upper-level design courses in those first two years if you take essentially all classes directed toward your major (instead of in other fields/colleges as well), or if you get a little ahead of yourself though. Those are both doable, but I did not do either of them and I am glad about that.
The classes in the Segal Design Institute are small (usually around 20 students or so) and based on group and individual project work. People I know who have taken those upper-level courses have liked them.
As a MaDE major, your kid will have to take a fair amount of mechanical engineering courses (MaDE curriculum: http://segal.northwestern.edu/programs/undergraduate/manufacturing-design-engineering/curriculum.html), as well as some industrial engineering courses, but naturally not as much as someone in either one of those majors. The point of the program is to produce design engineers with a large breadth of knowledge in production and the mechanical aspects of engineering, but I do sometimes wish that there was a larger part of the major devoted to design. You do, however, learn a fair amount about the design process. Let your daughter decide if there are enough design courses for what she wants.
If your daughter decides at some point that she wants to have a major besides MaDE, she can either do a double major (I know a fair amount of students doing this with MaDE) or get the Segal Design Certificate (http://segal.northwestern.edu/programs/undergraduate/segal-design-certificate/index.html) in addition to that other major.
The Segal Design Institute itself has a nice, home-y feel to it. There’s a growing amount of students each year, but its still kind of small and easy to run into / talk to professors in the Ford Building.
Since you’re visiting campus, see if you can get a tour of the Ford building (which might be coupled with a tour of Tech - the main science/engineering building). I’ve seen those happening before, but I’m not sure how one signs up for them. You could try to find out by emailing faculty connected to the department, or some of the leadership of the department (http://segal.northwestern.edu/about/leadership.html). You could also contact some of those people to figure out if your daughter could have a talk with someone from the department as to whether the program and your daughter are good fits for another. Not sure how well that would go over though.
If you have any more questions, please let me know.
Thanks for your feedback. We visit Monday and Tuesday. The engineering tour is Monday and we will plan on seeing the Ford building too!
Have fun!
Some additional news on Segal: https://segal.northwestern.edu/news-events/articles/motorola-executive-jim-wicks-joins-segal.html