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Investigating College Programs
You've excited your audience about engineering and piqued their interest.
"How do you become an engineer?", they ask.
There are different ways to answer this question. For example,
topics to discuss may include:
In addition to the materials provided in this section, there are other excellent materials which discuss these subjects in the Career Guidance section of the Society of Women Engineers' web site.
Here are some ideas on materials to discuss:
To find out what kind of programs and degrees a College
or University offers in engineering, you can check out both
the college catalogs (high school counselors will have them from
some schools, and a catalog from a particular school can
always be requested from its admissions department or the College of
Engineering) and the college web sites. In catalogs,
the College of Engineering section will list the programs and degrees
offered and possibly general requirements for admission. Then each department
will have a section that gives more detailed information. Each
section will usually have a couple of paragraphs describing the program,
the basic curriculum and requirements, and any additional admissions or
graduation requirements.
If the department has both graduate and undergraduate programs, it
will usually list the information for the undergraduate program first,
followed by the details for the graduate program. Short descriptions
of the classes that are offered by that department may be
included in the main sections, or they may be listed
under the College of Engineering in a later part of the
catalog. Some catalogs will include a list of the faculty for each department.
This information is also available on most college web sites.
These web sites also include additional information such as facilities and
labs, resources, research efforts by faculty, and programs
for both undergraduates and graduates. Student organizations within each
department are often highlighted or linked, too. Most schools
like to post pictures and updates for activities their students and
faculty are involved in, and they will update them regularly.
More and more, detailed descriptions of many classes can be
found on the web, too, including the class syllabus.
This document is handed out to the students at the start
of a class, and it outlines the goals and objectives
of the class, the prerequisites, the required text(s),
the professor's grading policy, a lecture schedule, and possibly
the homework assignments.
A new trend is to actually have the entire course taught
on the web; it's called web-based instruction.
The bulk of the work is presented on a web site,
and the students and instructor may only meet one or two
times face-to-face throughout the term. So
far, not too many engineering classes are available, because
of the difficulty in putting drawings,
sketches and equations on the web, but they are working
on that to make it simpler. It's an intriguing idea!