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"What courses were most and least useful to you in your engineering career?"

danzima

Hey there, community! It's a pretty muggy Friday here in Chicago, but also it's Friday, so on the whole things are good.

 

One of our Chicago colleagues is writing an article for another publication on the topic "What courses were most and least useful to you in your engineering career?", and he thought it would be interesting to get input from our community, so I wanted to open the question up to the members area.

Any response that makes it into the article will be credited to you, so maybe that'll be the start of your second career as a public intellectual and you'll wind up doing TED talks in Palm Springs soon enough?

 

Thanks in advance for your input!

Parents

  • Interesting topic.

     

    My education dates back nearly to the age of dinosaurs, but as an electronics engineering student, the most valuable classes were in computer programming (Fortran and Assembly Language, 'C' did not exist yet).  These lead me into programming, which at the time of my graduation was an understaffed field, leading me to wide open areas of engineering and proving to be a good source of employment throughout my career.  Equally important was a combination of 'hands-on' and theoretical courses, building knowledge in layers, from basic to advanced, that formed a well rounded 'core' education.  There were no real 'least useful' classes, but maybe some that were not well taught, like English, writing, public speaking, etc., that would have been useful to a career that led into leadership roles.

     

    My education was at a 'for profit' technical university, which here in the USA are really taking a beating in the press.  Some of it well deserved (I later taught at one of these schools, and it was clear the money was more important than the education of students) and some undeserved (I came out of college with an education that fully prepared me to exceed in the work place).  In retrospect, I would have thrived in any learning environment (I was born to be an engineer), but I would have benefited from a more rounded and challenging environment, like and state college/university, which could have allowed me to more fully realize my full potentials.

     

    Gene

Reply

  • Interesting topic.

     

    My education dates back nearly to the age of dinosaurs, but as an electronics engineering student, the most valuable classes were in computer programming (Fortran and Assembly Language, 'C' did not exist yet).  These lead me into programming, which at the time of my graduation was an understaffed field, leading me to wide open areas of engineering and proving to be a good source of employment throughout my career.  Equally important was a combination of 'hands-on' and theoretical courses, building knowledge in layers, from basic to advanced, that formed a well rounded 'core' education.  There were no real 'least useful' classes, but maybe some that were not well taught, like English, writing, public speaking, etc., that would have been useful to a career that led into leadership roles.

     

    My education was at a 'for profit' technical university, which here in the USA are really taking a beating in the press.  Some of it well deserved (I later taught at one of these schools, and it was clear the money was more important than the education of students) and some undeserved (I came out of college with an education that fully prepared me to exceed in the work place).  In retrospect, I would have thrived in any learning environment (I was born to be an engineer), but I would have benefited from a more rounded and challenging environment, like and state college/university, which could have allowed me to more fully realize my full potentials.

     

    Gene

Children