My HS junior daughter would like to work in the field of renewable energy and has mostly been looking within electrical engineering programs. She’s in a four-year engineering program at her HS and electrical seems to be her thing. She also loves coding and is thinking she would like to do a second major or minor in CS. At a few schools we’ve been to engineering Q&A sessions and from what some of the speakers have said, computer engineering sounds kind of like a combination of EE and CS. My daughter insists that she doesn’t want to do computer engineering and that it is more about designing computers. She’s stubborn and I’m not sure where her info comes from, but then I’m no font of knowledge in engineering myself. What say you experts about how these three come together and what might be the best path for a kid who likes EE, coding, and renewable energy?
Hmmm…this is a tough one…the intersection…
P0 = The Intersection of three majors
D1=Electrical Engineering
D2=Computer Engineering
D3=CS
then…
P0=(-D1(n…wait…that’s not what you’re talking about!!
First, consider that all engineering majors do some programing and that a minor in CS is popular with many students in different engineering majors.
Think of Computer Engineering as a subset of EE. It grew out of EE departments, and in many schools is still part of that department. It’s similar to how Environmental Engineering grew out of Civil Engineering.
CS is much less focused on hardware. I would recommend you take a look at the classes offered in each program. You’ll notice that both EE and CompE majors take classes like Circuits and product design, while CS takes more software, operating system and math related classes.
I would think an EE degree is most applicable to renewable energy (photovoltaics, smart grids, energy storage, etc.), but coding is used in everything…and renewable energy is a multi-disciplined field.
Common subareas of upper level courses and how they are usually viewed among those areas:
EE = electrical engineering
CPE = computer engineering
CS = computer science
SE = software engineering
power systems (EE)
electromagnetic fields and waves (EE)
signal processing (EE)
device electronics (EE, CPE)
digital design (CPE, CS, EE)
computer architecture (CPE, CS)
operating systems (CS, SE, CPE)
network software (CS, SE, CPE)
compilers (CS, SE, CPE)
databases (CS, SE)
algorithms and theory (CS, SE)
software engineering (SE, CS)
Where a school offers more than one of these majors, careful inspection of the actual required and optional courses is the best way to get an idea of what each major emphasizes. Some have majors with broader names like electrical and computer engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, or computer science and engineering; the same inspection of curricula applies here.
All engineering majors use programming. Computer science is not programming or coding. Like engineering, computer science can use programming languages to address issues or solve problems, but the core of computer science is applied math, same as engineering.
While curricula and required courses will differ from school to school, these are all closely related areas. At many schools, electrical and computer engineering are part of the same program, as computer engineering is generally a subset of electrical engineering. At many schools, computer science is part of the engineering department.
That said, if she’s interested in renewable energy and engineering, the obvious major is EE (or CE). CS focuses more on math and software, generally speaking, than an EE or CE or ECE major. Programming will be involved in all of these majors.
@Gator88NE (ah, math humor – I’m betting you’re an xkcd fan!), @ucbalumnus and @AuraObscura
Thanks for the information! Okay, my daughter knows what she’s talking about and I don’t. (I’m sure this will happen more and more, so I might as well get used to it). As per her current plan, it looks like EE is definitely her best choice for renewable, plus she already knows she enjoys that field. As for whether to double or minor in CS, I’ll encourage her to look at the specific EE curricula and the amount of programming included at different schools. I’m thinking a minor would be a nice “extra” but a double major might be too much, with engineering already being such a difficult and time-consuming major. You all really helped clear things up for me!