Thursday, February 14, 2008

I'ma Eng-in-neer

If you thought of a game sound file reading that, well, I think enough said.

So, I happen to be an engineer. Cool. Not a railroad engineer, I mean the kind that builds stuff and optimizes things and figures out new applications for the latest and greatest technology.

At Mudd, we don't have Electrical Engineering Major, nor Aerospace Engineering Major, but instead have a General Engineering Major. Why? It's because of the idea that becoming a super specialized Engineer could be a bad thing. What if that area suddenly isn't useful? How do you cope with changing demands? Will you be able to communicate effectively with others in other disciplines? At Harvey Mudd, we try very hard to give you the breadth of knowledge to be a nimble engineer in the professional world, but there's also a commitment to allow you to specialize in your passion.

And here's the problem. To do both, you've gotta learn alot. Which is why the Engineering Major at Mudd is notorious for being a giant time suck. In fact, according to oral lore, once upon a time Engineers were required to overload at least one semester just to graduate. The Accreditation Board decided that wasn't good, and so told HMC to fix it. They did, by reducing the number of credits of certain courses. However, the class load remains the same.

It's not all bad, though. I mean, you get to build a processor chip in the VLSI class. Our new E80: Engineering Field Experience now offers you the chance to shoot off rockets and take the data from the flight for analysis (assuming it didn't blow up). And best of all, we get really cool Clinic Projects which let us as undergrads essentially work as if outsourced to some professional company. For example, Raytheon, DirecTV, and CIMIT all have Clinics going on at Mudd. Cool, huh?

2 comments:

KMarsh said...

Hey spellman, what's clinic?

Unknown said...

Try and imagine the college outsourcing it's undergrads to some company. Then give them a budget, the freedom to make their own schedule, and constrain them to a certain deliverable. Finally, give them a faculty adviser and have them work with a liaison from the company who's paying for all of it. That's pretty close.

Essentially a giant year-long project solving a real problem a real company actually wants fixed. As an undergrad. With a team of only undergrads.