Tufts Engineering feedback

[engneermom]

My son was accepted to Tufts Engineering as well as U Rochester, Case Western and UMD. We are trying to assess the strength of the engineering school at Tufts and if it is strong enough for him to attend. He is quite academic will likely focus on Mech. Eng or Civil/ Environmental. Does anyone have any info. as to how engaged the professors are with undergrads, are the classes more theoretical or hands-on project based, and are there research opportunities available? Tufts is attractive for so many reasons in addition to being so highly selective but we want to make sure it is a strong science school as well as liberal arts.

[Mastadon]

@engneemom -

Actually, engineering is considered one of Tufts stronger disciplines. You do not hear much about it because it is small and until recently undergrad/teaching focused. Engineering makes up just over 10% of the undergrad population. There is no separate housing for engineers, which makes for an environment that broadens the overall learning experience.

The engineering selectivity was 11% for the class of 2020 (it was 14% for engineering+ A&S).

Back in the 1990’s Tufts appointed a Dean of Engineering whose area of research was engineering education. The curriculum was redesigned with a goal of reducing attrition. A low single digit attrition rate was achieved (the national average is about 40%) and lots of larger engineering organizations came to visit to see how it was accomplished. These days the attrition rate is actually negative (meaning that more students transfer to engineering from liberal arts, then to liberal arts from engineering). One of the key elements was introducing hands on project work freshman year. This provides some context to make the theory more relevant. This is particularly important for students that didn’t take apart the family car for fun when they were in high school. Liberal Arts students will actually take the intro engineering courses to satisfy their science distribution courses and some decide to switch. Tufts also offers non-traditional interdisciplinary majors and minors that span the boundary between engineering and arts and sciences.

Base science and math courses are the same as science and math majors, so they are somewhat theoretical. A couple of exceptions are that there is an applied Calc 2 course and and engineering statistics course (more problem solving vs derivations/proofs). One can take either version.

Tufts employs Professors of the Practice for some engineering subjects. This is intended to introduce real world practices to the students. The location is great for internships - about 80% of engineers have at least one internship and about 40% have two or more. Most internships occur over the summer, but, in some cases, they can extend (part time) into the semester. Academic credit can be given for some internships. There are also clubs that enter national design competitions. For example, the Hybrid Racing Club recently beat CMU and Georgia Tech to win an electric car design/driving competition.
http://www.formula-hybrid.org/about/history/2015-formula-hybrid-competition/

In the last 5-10 years the Phd programs have grown, but they are still pretty small. Because of the small size, research tends to be interdisciplinary and centered around the broad themes of Human Health, Sustainability and the Human/Technology Interface. The total volume of research cannot be compared with a school the size of UMD, but normalized to the number of students it is similar, and there are much fewer Phd’s and post docs to compete with.

Note that Tufts does not offer a degree in the specialty of aeronautical engineering, but GE recruits at Tufts for their training program which includes a master’s degree. The other schools do not appear to offer a degree in the specialty of environmental engineering. Tufts has a sustainability research lab that spends just over a million dollars on research and the ME department participates in the work of the robotics labs.

Feel free to ask questions and good luck!

Here are some data points for comparison:

The 25th - 75th percentile standardized test scores(engineering only) for last year (2015) were:
…Tufts…CWR…Rochester…UMD
SAT…2085-2225 …1950-2160…1850-2120…not reported

Here are some research related metrics:
…Tufts…CWR…Rochester…UMD
Mechanical Eng
Research…$3.3M…$4.5M*…$3.1M…$19M

Grads ME...........49.....................66........................43......................296

Grads Aero..........0.....................18..........................0........................82

NSF Schol**.........3......................8...........................2........................11

*includes Aero (UMD spends an additional $15M on Aero and has 18
additional Aero scholarships)

Civil/Env
Research…$2.8M…$957K…$0…$25M

Grads................19.....................19........................ 0......................118

NSF Schol**........1.......................0.........................1.......................5

**research scholarships won by undergrads for graduate study

Here are some industry related metrics:
…Tufts…CWR…Rochester…UMD
Payscale Engineering (all types - 2015)
Rank…12…49…23… 60
Early Career…$67.6K…$63.1K…$62.5K…$63K
Mid Career…$128K…$113K…$123K…$111K

[engneermom]

Thanks for all of this helpful info! My son is at Tufts right now and is checking out the engineering school. You have provided a lot of great info. on why this could be a good choice. Now the question is - is it worth the extra $?

[Mastadon]

@engneermom I found some more information on the curriculum re-design in the 90’s.

Tufts attrition rate was about twenty five percent going into the redesign.

The prevailing sentiment within the academic engineering community nationwide was that only certain people were cut out to be engineers and that it was their job to weed out the rest. As a result, the high attrition rate was to be expected, and nobody ever thought to ask students why they were dropping out.

I had a brother who was just ahead of me at Tufts (back in the 70’s) who transferred to Liberal Arts because “engineering wasn’t what he thought it was going to be”.

Note that as a liberal arts student he set up a lab in the ME Department borrowed some expensive test equipment and performed some research that resulted in us starting a company that helped us cover some of our college costs.

This is going to sound really dumb to those outside of engineering, but the most important part of the curriculum redesign was to realize that students transferring out of engineering is not a desirable outcome, and that maybe someone should ask the students why they were transferring. One of the outcomes (described below) was the redesign of the Thermodynamics class.

Since then, attrition rate has been tracked with continuous improvement as a goal.

Given the opportunity cost of transferring out of engineering, I would ask every school that I was considering what their transfer rate is and listen carefully to/probe the response, because it will be a good indicator of the culture of the engineering school.

It was during his years at Tufts that Miaoulis became an evangelist for outside-the-box approaches to explaining and teaching science and engineering. Before he became dean, the engineering school was losing about twenty-five percent of its freshmen to liberal arts, he recalls. “We had focus groups in the dean’s lounge and asked why. The answer was basically ‘We don’t find engineering interesting.’ ” Miaoulis drew on his own passions to spice things up. Thermodynamics, for example, was “one of the most dreadful courses in engineering. Everyone hated taking it and everyone hated teaching it,” which, as a new professor, he was assigned to do. “We ended up making it one of the most interesting courses in engineering by adding things like teamwork and hands-on projects.” And long before fancy chefs became America’s new priesthood, Miaoulis, quite a cook himself, created a course called Gourmet Engineering, using a fully equipped kitchen to teach concepts such as heat transfer. That and other new courses became hugely popular.

http://emerald.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/summer2015/discover/zzzt.html