The University Guide

Archive for the ‘Engineering Education’ Category

Jobs in Mechanical Engineering

Have you found your knack yet? I think all of us want to find that slot in life that we just seem to fit perfectly into. Now I’m not just talking about the spouse and family aspect, but also about the career side. Do you know what you would love to do for a living? This is a question that is often more difficult than easy to answer. Okay, not counting becoming a socialite, who just shops all day like Paris Hilton. If you had to pick one job to do for the next 40 years, what would it be? Well, I can give you examples of a few rewarding ones. How about careers in medicine, law, or possibly teaching? Then there are plenty of jobs in mechanical engineering.

Engineering Jobs

As a mechanical engineers, you can also be in charge of the design of tools which will be used by other engineers in their work. Among all the engineering specialization, mechanical engineering is one of the broadest engineering disciplines. Indeed mechanical engineers are not restrained to one particular position in companies or to any sector possibly working in production operations in manufacturing or agriculture, maintenance, or technical sales. Many mechanical engineers even work as administrators or managers.

Mechanical engineers will work mainly on power-producing machines including electric generators, internal combustion engines, and steam and gas turbines. But they can also work on other power-using machines including refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment, machine tools, material handling systems, elevators and escalators, industrial production equipment, and robots used in manufacturing.

Mechanical Engineering Education

If a mechanical engineering education is in your future then you can expect to gain a wealth of training and knowledge from your trade school of choice. Since most entry-level engineering occupations require a formal education, a Bachelor Degree in mechanical engineering would be most desirable, but an Associate Degree would be adequate for some jobs.

Students applying for entry to mechanical engineering schools will need a solid background in math, science, English and other humanities.

To offer public services, a mechanical engineer must not only have a thorough mechanical engineering education, but must also acquire licensure. All 50 states require engineers who offer services to the public to maintain a license.

Being skilled in a variety of electrical, electronic and mechanical work can be a big advantage to any individual especially in these uncertain times. While some people possessing non-mechanical skills may not be fortunate to hang on to their present jobs or may be unlucky to get employed today, those with electrical and mechanical skills have a good chance of keeping a regular job and getting higher wages owing to the vital function they serve in major industries.

Lueny Morell, director of engineering education innovation at HP Labs, discusses exciting innovations in engineering education.

How Can Engineers Help me to Become a Wise Global Citizen?

If we want to heal the planet then we need to begin working with the positive forces that already exist. Moving away from the current unsustainable guiding principles of strategy or growth, towards health, personal and global isn’t easy, although now that Barack Obama is President elect of the USA, everything seems more possible.

Many of us live in societies that encourage us to believe that the planet’s resources are there to serve ‘limitless’ wants and manufactured needs. Scientist Richard Eckersley explains that we have created these by turning the seven deadly sins, greed, lust, laziness and so on, into the seven marketing imperatives. Despite this, many of us also realise that the planet’s resources are finite and strained and that we have to change our values if we want our civilisation to continue. Becoming a wise global citizen means moving away from a ‘what’s in it for me’ culture to a ‘we’re in this together’ culture based on partnership not domination. This challenges perspectives and values.

As a university teacher, I want to contribute to healthier, healing futures. By chance, I became involved with first year engineering students. The teaching team wanted to improve their communication skills, break down some of the perceived gender and ethnic barriers and introduce principles of sustainability. Communication skills included written and oral skills and interpersonal and cross-cultural communication. As long as engineering discourse continues to denigrate these as ‘soft’ skills, there is little reason for students to respect their importance. Since “soft” is usually a feminine attribute, this also makes it harder for women to become part of this engineering culture.

Most engineering students come from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds and, in Australia, include many international students. Although the presence of diversity is widely believed to create better cultural understanding, it doesn’t just happen. It is hard for students to cross gender, age and culture barriers without active support from teachers. By sustainability, we meant moving beyond an add-on, token acknowledgement of the widely accepted Brundtland definition that sustainability means meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p. 8). It is also unfortunate that sustainability has been welded to words such as ‘growth’, ‘consumption’ and ‘development’, which have caused many of the problems. A more appropriate ethic is what the sustainability scientists call interconnectedness, based on taking responsibility for “the well-being of others, nature and future generations” (Raskin et al., 2002, p. 56).

The initial responses to these topics and the methods, including a reflective journal, were disheartening. Everyone, they assured us, hated the work and couldn’t see why engineers had to engage with such ‘crap’. And yet, when I read the journals of this diverse group of students, mainly male, but from over 30 different ethnic backgrounds and including international and mature age students, signs of growth shone through.

Six years of research helped me to understand what was happening and to improve what I taught and how I taught it (Kelly, 2006). I used student interviews to help me understand what changes took place, what blocked them, what helped students to grow and how they grew. The unit of study was far from perfect and poorly supported by other engineering faculty but still students changed. The data showed that far from “everyone” hating what we did, around 65% accepted it, willingly, “I’m really looking forward to this”, or grudgingly, “I’ll give it a go”. 25% were converts, who hated it at the beginning but understood the benefits at the end. For some of these the change was transformative.

Resisters and ‘resistings’

The problems lay with the disproportionate influence of the around 10% who, for various reasons, resisted all the way. Resisters are so “loud” in their resistance and criticism that we assume “everyone” feels the same way. “Arrogance” and “contempt for non-technical material” have been identified as lingering aspects of engineering culture, but similar attitudes are recognisable in every organization or group. What we and they need to realise is they do not speak for all students (or staff) and that they have to respect others’ right to change.

I moved past seeing these students as “resisters,’ with all the negative connotations of that label. Identifying and understanding the causes behind ‘resistings’ in any situation, can help us to work more effectively. For example, some of the engineering resisters were scared of writing because they had been criticised for poor writing at school. The findings are useful because resistance to challenging the dominant culture is not peculiar to western systems. India, for example, is trying various approaches to improve the participation of women and minority groups in engineering and academic life generally.

I identified the following stages in interviewees who changed, not necessarily in this order. Students first got connected, to the topics and to others; they got respect, for themselves and others; they got insight; they got inspired; they got healing, from damaged self-esteem, from being racists and from feeling victimized by racism; and they got transformation. These were expressed as six qualities that I think mark a wise global citizen:

Empathy with and sensitivity to other ways of being and knowing

Global consciousness

Being capable of trans-generational thinking, past and future;

Having courage;

Being able to contemplate changes to their current way of life;

Working towards healthier futures, from the personal to the spiritual.

Wanting to make a difference

The hopeful message is that so many students wanted to work for a better future, even at the expense of their own privileged way of life, and were relieved to get support to say so. Wanting to make a difference is an emerging, healthy but still muted discourse. Recently I revisited engineering education, looking at an Australian report and a national newspaper advertorial trying to attract students to engineering as a career. The underlying myth of the education report is a ‘business as usual’ future in which the planet is a market place where engineers make it, sell it or fix it. The advertorial’s myth is worse, seeing the planet as an open-cut mine. Engineers are depicted as well-paid cogs in a boom machine which is based on consume now, pay later.

In the face of powerful overt and covert institutionalised resistance and counter-messages we need Globo sapiens’ courage to make conscious and self-conscious efforts to change what we say, write and do. At work and in our personal life, we can use our authentic voice, however small it seems, on behalf of each other and the planet. As Globo sapiens we won’t just be a civilising influence because we are doing better things differently. We will be different.

References

Eckersley, R. (2004). Well and Good: Morality, meaning and happiness. Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing.
Kelly, P. (2006). Towards Globo sapiens: Using Reflective Journals to prepare engineering students able to engage with sustainable futures, from http://adt.library.qut.edu.au/adt-qut/public/adt-QUT20070403.150024/
Kelly, P. (2008). Towards Globo Sapiens: Transforming learners in Higher Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Raskin, P., Banuri, T., Gallopin, G., Gutman, P., Hammond, A., Kates, R., et al. (2002). Great Transition: the promise and lure of the times ahead. Boston: Stockholm Environment Institute.
WCED, World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our Common Future (The Brundtland Report). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

What Is Sound Engineering And Where Can You Get Trained?

Sound Engineering is has become a popular profession in today’s job market. Despite this, not many people know what is involved in Sound Engineering. Commonly referred to as audio engineering, this field deals with the usage of electronic devices for sound mixing, recording and sound editing.

Sound engineering plays an important role in movie and music production. However, with advancements in the sound engineering technology, the applications of the job have increased to include various jobs like aircraft crash investigation and many other complicated sound research systems. As you can see, a career in sound engineering gives you a wide variety of career choices. With the huge popularity explosion of this field, many sound engineering schools have opened up worldwide. However, several factors have to be considered for selecting the best Sound Mixing School.

Look For well experienced faculty

You are probably well aware of the fact that Sound Engineering is complicated field of work. It is imperative that you receive a good sound engineering education before jumping into the job market. Unlike some other tech fields, Sound engineering cannot be learned by reading up on it by yourself. Even if it could be, a good practical education in sound engineering is necessary to insure that you can get a good job.

To successfully learn the intricacies of sound engineering, you will need the assistance of some experienced people who knows the subject of audio recording very well. It is very important to make sure that the faculty of the training school you are looking into is well experienced and knowledgeable enough to provide you the best Sound Engineering Education.

Most of the audio recording schools will have inexperienced teachers who have earned the degree recently, and have little field experience. Because there are only few experienced professionals in the field of Sound Engineering, only a few schools get to have a good, experienced faculty at their school.

Look for audio recording schools with close association to the music industry

The association of the audio recoding school with the music industry will be beneficial in many ways. Apart from the increased career opportunities, such audio recording schools can offer you hands on experience in the sound recording and mixing techniques during the training period. As these schools will be closely linked with the music industry, they will be able to provide you seminars and interviews with the music industry experts.

The well equipped lab facilities

Sound Engineering education requires lots of practical classes than the theory ones. Hence the sound mixing school of your choice should be well equipped with sophisticated Sound engineering instruments. Getting Sound engineering education in such schools will prepare you to meet any challenges in the music industry.

The best place to get Sound Engineering Education.

Though sound engineering education is provided all over the world, only a few training schools will have all the above mentioned features. The Satellite Campus in Gilbert is one of the best sound mixing schools available.

As this campus is located in one of America’s fastest growing cities, getting into aspiring Careers in Recording Arts is not a big deal at all. The Gilbert Campus is in close proximity to Mesa, which is one of the world’s best education centers. As the campus is located near one of America’s most popular cities, schools there are closely associated with the music industry too. The Careers in Recording Arts are many and varied in the field of Sound Engineering.

Ariens Company has partnered with Brillion High School to create a state-of-the-art learning center where students work on diverse projects such as high-mileage vehicles and hydroponics Blueprint: Designing Wisconsin’s Future examines how schools, businesses, and communities are partnering to prepare students for the 21st century workplace and society. Featuring interviews with students, teachers and community supporters, Blueprint explores the effects of innovative science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs on communities throughout Wisconsin.  For more information, go to: www.ecb.org