Engineering student

“ If it be a concern manufacturing steam-turbines, say, the young engineer in time becomes expert and a specialist in steam-turbines. So, too, with graduates in mining engineering, in electrical engineering, in civil engineering, although the opportunities for specialization in any of these latter branches are not so good as in the mechanical field. However, entering upon a certain kind of work, the student usually follows this work to the end of his days, which is probably what engineering schools expect. All strive to educate only in the principles of each of the major branches. ”

“ The student’s time in the fourth year, is divided between strictly technical work in college and an attempt to co-ordinate with this the cooperative industrial work in industry. In this manner, the practical side of his profession is emphasized. The technical work in school consists of applying the principles developed in the previous year to definite engineering problems. This is done by a study of power plants, turbines, internal combustion engines, heating and ventilation and structural design. ”

“ The chief aim of the engineering college should be to develop the intellectual power that will enable the student not only to acquire quickly the details of practice, but will also enable him ultimately to establish precedents and determine the practice of his times. Incidentally the engineering college should seek to expand the horizon and widen the sympathy of its students. In college classes there will be those who are either unable or unwilling to attain the highest educational ideals, and who will become only the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the engineering profession ”

“ Reynolds, of Owens College, Manchester, in an address on "Engineering as a Profession," proposes the following course of preparation for the student who aims to be an engineer: Up to the age of sixteen or seventeen he should devote himself to acquiring a "general education." ”

“ Although it is common for a student to change his primary interest from one science to another during his college training, he should have in mind from the beginning the sort of broad career he wants and the amount of time that preparation will take.
For example, a bachelor’s degree in one of the physical or geological sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, archaeology, agriculture, metallurgy, or mathematics usually requires four years. Some engineering programs require five. ”

“ The fact is recognized by teachers of these subjects in purely technical schools, that because the student is to be a specialist in some line of engineering, he can not at the same time be a specialist in ancient and modern languages, in history, economics and the pure sciences. From the engineer's standpoint, as regards the acquirement of this supplementary general training, there is much to be said in favor of the autonomy of technical schools. ”

“ Naturally there have been developments in the recording, accounting, and clerical ends of the business, but scientific management in production on the one hand, and scientific selling on the other, are the two great developments. In both, engineering plays a prominent part and dictates a close correlation of the business and the engineering curricula of a college or university seeking to give most effective training either to the student of business or the student of engineering. ”

“ These men should have not only a knowledge of the fundamentals of engineering, but also a knowledge of economic theory, business functions, and human relationships. It is also believed that a knowledge of these subjects will be beneficial to those men who remain in the engineering field.
Therefore, in addition to the training in the fundamental principles of engineering, every student in the Newark College of Engineering is required to take all of the courses listed in the Department of Industrial Engineering. ”

“ There can be no doubt in the mind of a sane man that this practical instruction [laboratory work] is exactly what is needed by our engineering students. We are assured of that fact by the expression of gratification on the part of our engineering alumni to find here the very instruction which they were obliged to spend two or three years to secure after graduating. We give our students work of an elementary character for a few weeks, or until they become accustomed to tools, when we put them to work on some part of a machine. ”

“ His presidential address in 1866 (Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, xxv. 203) was a memorable one in the history of engineering education in Great Britain, as it dealt almost entirely with that subject, and as a result of it the institution created the class of student members, a step which has done much to encourage the scientific training of young engineers. ”

“ However, the student with a conscience will effectively guard the secrets of his employer as contained in his note-book, holding its contents for his own use in furthering the interests of the company which employs him.
And finally—in the matter of personality—patience and regard for the foibles of others will go far toward advancing the young engineer toward success. He must never forget in his earlier years that he is embryonic in the profession; that the profession is a difficult one and with many ramifications ”

“ The wonderful progress in this field made within the past twenty years is one of the marvels of the engineering profession. Dynamos, motors, arc-lights, alternating current, the X-ray—these are a few of the things which followers of the profession have created for the uses of mankind. The field is yet practically unexplored, and offers to engineering students an outlet for their energies—provided they enter this branch of engineering—second to none of the other branches. ”

“ In nearly all cases, the student is led to make the investigation by the bent of his own mind, or by the desire to do work that may be of service to him in the practice of his profession. All theses are expected to be made complete and satisfactory to the head of department of Engineering before his signature is appended to the diploma which is finally issued to the graduating student. ”

“ The graduate may learn much of a practical commercial nature which perforce39 has been denied him in his student days, and also, having entered upon this apprenticeship, he not only gets acquainted with production on a large scale, but he is brought into touch with what constitutes most recent acceptable practice as well. This, provided he be a mechanical or an electrical engineer. Graduates in civil and mining engineering, while offered positions from executives in these particular branches also, have no such large opportunities offered them. The work itself does not permit it. ”

“ Engineering Students Especially Interested Social workers in our colleges have in many instances found engineering students “too busy,” and as a rule not so open to the altruistic appeal as those in other departments of the universities. Yet, it is a fact that 70 per cent of the 3,000 men engaged in industrial service are engineers. The reason is obvious: A football captain (an engineer) said the other day:
“This industrial work is the livest thing that’s struck college since I’ve been here. It’s a real job and it’s practical. ”

“ It undoubtedly is better for the High School boy to go to a technical school for his course in civil engineering; yet with a foundation of mathematics and a sufficient amount of determination, the High School boy may go direct to the engineer's office and pick up his profession. ”

“ If a young man be of those who early like to crawl in under the family buzz-wagon; tinker there for half a day at a time; emerge in a thick coating of grease and dust and with joy in his eye—such a young man has the necessary qualifications for a successful engineer. He may never do this—as I say—in all his engineering career. But the yearning must be as much a part of him as his love for mathematics—so much so that all his engineering days he will feel something akin to envy for the machinist who works over a machine of the engineer's own devising—and it must be vitally a part of him. ”

“ The profession itself, almost, will take care of him afterward.
However, not all of our engineers have gone upward by the overalls route. Nor is13 it at all necessary to do this in order to attain to success. The high-school graduate, entering a college of engineering, has an equal chance. Some maintain that he has a better chance. Certain it is that he is better qualified to cope with the heavier theoretical problems which come up every day in the average engineer's work. There is a place for him, side by side with the practical man, and his knowledge will be everywhere respected and sought. ”

“ The innumerable applications of scientific discovery to practical engineering, and especially the rapid growth of Electrical Engineering, have made it absolutely necessary that a modern engineer worthy of the name should have some knowledge of science. The older method of training for the young engineer was that he should be articled to an engineer in practice, and, apart from the training he received in office and works, he got no scientific training unless he were enthusiastic enough to attend evening classes in some technical institution. ”

“ It will be seen, therefore, that in nearly all European countries, instruction in engineering in all its branches and in chemical technology has become a recognized part of a university course, and that the faculty of applied science has been so enlarged as to provide technical education of the highest grade.
Some of the best schools for the higher technical instruction—for the training of masters and of those who are to occupy the position of managers in engineering; and industrial works — are found in the United States. ”

“ The inventor is something else—a wilding in the profession—and as such cannot be considered in a paper of this kind, save only as to say that he is the presiding genius among engineers, the Shakespeare or Milton among his kind, a man whose path to the heights is nowhere known of men. The consulting engineer, on the contrary, representing, as he does, the zenith of slowly attained power in some certain branch of engineering, a vantage—point open freely to all, is the embodiment of the goal toward which all graduates should strive. ”

“ It matters little—save only that he who gets the practical side first is earning his way while getting it, while the man who goes to college is in the majority of cases being supported from outside sources while getting what he wants. But in the end it balances. Merely, the "full" engineer must have both. Having both, he has, literally, the world within his grasp. For engineering is—to repeat—the adapting of discoveries in science and art to the uses of mankind. And both art and science reflect and are drawn from Mother Nature. ”

“ It is that the University School should itself be a centre of inspiration for the engineering profession; that it should be a place where original experimental work is always being carried on, where inventions are tried out, and where engineering firms may come for help in carrying out tests and experiments to advance technical knowledge, and particularly to assist in the solution of engineering problems of special importance to the State.
All the large modern engineering and manufacturing corporations have realized the value of scientific research. ”

“ The engineer can do much around his own home, if he so choose, that of itself is a source of great satisfaction. Engineers can swing doors, build fireplaces, landscape, erect fences, make garden, and can perform these tasks with a degree of neatness and skill that brings favorable comment from journeymen whose vocations this work is, and do the work without training whatsoever in the work. Wall-papering, painting, carpentering, laying up of brick, or the placing of a dry wall—plastering, glazing—the list is endless that as side-plays are possible to the man with an engineering training. ”

“ But besides the training of the young engineer in the foundation principles of his profession, there is another object of a University engineering school that is of even equal importance. Indeed, some of our big University brothers have been telling us that unless we keep this object well to the fore we cannot be regarded as a real University at all. ”

“ The only collegiate training one of the most distinguished American engineers of the last generation had was a general literary course followed by a law course. Further, [Pg 510] a considerable number have successfully practiced engineering, after only a general college education, and this in recent years when engineering curricula have become widely differentiated. Examples in other lines of business could be cited to show that a knowledge of technical details is not the most important element in a preparation for a profession or for business. ”

“ The young engineer must proceed slowly in everything he undertakes; when brought to a halt through difficulties he should instantly appeal to one or another of his associates or superiors; he must be absolutely frank in all his dealings with these associates and superiors. In this regard, also, it might be said that the young graduate, following a habit become almost second nature with him in his school-days, must keep a note-book covering his activities throughout each working-day, a book wherein he will jot down everything of value to him which comes up in the day's work. ”