Engineers need a lot of education because they deal with such a broad and complex area. It takes many years to learn about the various theories, techniques and mathematics that an engineer may require at some point in their career. As science is advancing all the time engineers must continue learning throughout their careers, by reading research and attending seminars, to keep up with the latest development in their field. They need to have technical competency and technical curiosity.

Good engineers must have excellent interpersonal and perfect organizational skills, because they usually work in a team, most time as leaders. They need to use quantitative thinking, be able to solve problems and make right decisions.

Some of these qualities must be nurtured and encouraged during childhood: for example to be curious about how things work and to try and find solutions to problems. Others can be developed through education and ongoing professional training.

Types of Engineering Degrees

There are essentially two types of engineering degree (academic qualification completed at a college): undergraduate degrees such as Bachelor of Science (BS or BSc), awarded upon completion of a course of study that typically lasts four years. Postgraduate degrees – a master’s degree (MSc) – one or two more years of study and a doctorate (PhD – Doctor of Philosophy) – that can be achieved in a variety of fields. In some cases an MSc can be awarded solely on the basis of research, in which case it is denoted MSc (Res), be entirely taught or, more commonly, be a mixture of the two. MEng is a master’s degree in the field of engineering.

    There are special governing bodies which grant accreditation to university engineering degree programs. In the USA it is ABET (American Board for Engineering and Technology) and in the United Kingdom EAB (Engineering Accreditation Board).

Design and Design Engineer

You see their work everywhere. They are designers, visual thinkers, problem solvers. With a creative education, they become graphic designers, interior designers, industrial designers. Their creativity is behind every object we interact with today. And they are going to think up the objects you see and use tomorrow.

Design engineer is a general term that covers multiple engineering disciplines including electrical, mechanical and civil engineering, architectural engineers in the U.S. and building engineers in the U.K.

The design engineer is distinguished from the designer/drafter by virtue of the fact that a design engineer takes care of the total system as well as inner workings/engineering of a design. While industrial designers may be responsible for the conceptual aesthetic and ergonomic aspects of a design, the design engineer usually works with a team of engineers and designers to develop the conceptual, preliminary and detail design and the most critical parts.

In addition design engineers deal with much more complex technological and scientific systems (aircraft, spacecraft, rockets, trains, ships, bridges, building structures, urban infrastructure, machinery, oil, gas, and mining exploration systems, manufacturing processes, military systems, cars, electronics, computers, power generation systems - nuclear, fossil, wind, ocean, and power distribution systems). Industrial design deals with individual artifacts (chairs, cups, home interiors, furniture, auto interiors, electronic displays, consumer goods).

In many engineering areas, a distinction is made between the design engineer and the planning engineer in design. Planning engineers are more concerned with designing on a more systems engineering level, and overlaps onto the operational side are often necessary. Design engineers, in contrast, are more concerned with designing a particular new product or system. However in very narrowly defined areas the design process and concepts will usually start with an ideation session from the industrial designer. Analysis is important for planning engineers, while synthesis is paramount for design engineers.

When the design involves public safety, the design engineer is usually required to be licensed, for example a Professional Engineer in the U.S and Canada. There is usually an “industrial exemption” for design engineers working on project internal to companies and not delivering professional services directly to the public.

Design engineer may work in a team along with designers to create the drawings necessary for prototyping and production, or in the case of buildings, for construction. However, with the advent of CAD and solid modeling software (SolidWorks, SpaceClaim, Solid Edge, Autodesk Inventor, Pro/ENGINEER, NX, CATIA, etc, for example) the design engineers may create the drawings themselves.

The next responsibility of many design engineers is prototyping. A model of the product is created and reviewed. Prototypes are usually functional and non-functional. Functional "alpha" prototypes are used for testing and the non-functional are used for form and fit checking. Virtual prototyping software like Ansys or Comsol may also be used. This stage is where design flaws are found and corrected, and tooling, manufacturing fixtures, and packaging are developed.

Once the "alpha" prototype is finalized, after many iterations, the next step is the "beta" pre-production prototype. The design engineer, working with a manufacturing engineer and a quality engineer reviews an initial run of components and assemblies for design compliance and fabrication/manufacturing methods analysis.

Professional Engineer

Do you know any engineer who owns their own firm? Perform consulting work? Bid for government contracts? Sign and seal designs? If you do, you might notice a two-letter title that appears after their names: P.E. It stands for Professional Engineer. It’s a designation that indicates that someone has met a series of stringent requirements and is qualified to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare through their professional expertise. A P.E. has graduated from an accredited degree program, passed two exams (the FE and the PE), and worked under the supervision of another P.E. for four years.

As you can imagine, people who have a P.E. license are proud of this accomplishment. It gives them professional prestige. It leads to a wealth of career opportunities–running a firm, for instance–that otherwise wouldn’t be available.

Oh yeah, and a P.E. usually commands a higher salary than unlicensed colleagues, if you care about that sort of thing.

NCEES (www.ncees.org) is the organization that helps set the standards for licensure. We coordinate the efforts of state licensing boards throughout the country and provide services that help licensed engineers continue to advance their careers. We also write, administer, and score the FE and PE exams for engineers who seek to become Professional Engineers.

NCEES is an organization made up of and designed for Professional Engineers. The people who determine the requirements for licensure are all licensed P.E.'s themselves. Throughout the year, Professional Engineers from around the U.S. gather at NCEES headquarters to develop the FE and PE exams. They are passionate about what they do because they are proud of their profession.

The FE exam tests the engineering fundamentals you learn in college. May students take it during their senior year. The PE exam comes later, after a candidate has gained four or more years of experience in his or her chose discipline. This exam tests the things you learn through experience working on engineering projects. Each major engineering discipline has its specific PE exam that tests knowledge within that discipline.

What is science?

The word "science" probably brings to mind many different pictures: a fat textbook, white lab coats and microscopes, an astronomer peering through a telescope, a naturalist in the rainforest, Einstein's equations scribbled on a chalkboard, the launch of the space shuttle, bubbling beakers …. All of those images reflect some aspect of science, but none of them provides a full picture because science has so many facets:

Science is both a body of knowledge and a process. In school, science may sometimes seem like a collection of isolated and static facts listed in a textbook, but that's only a small part of the story. Just as importantly, science is also a process of discovery that allows us to link isolated facts into coherent and comprehensive understandings of the natural world.

Science is exciting. Science is a way of discovering what's in the universe and how those things work today, how they worked in the past, and how they are likely to work in the future. Scientists are motivated by the thrill of seeing or figuring out something that no one has before.

Science is useful. The knowledge generated by science is powerful and reliable. It can be used to develop new technologies, treat diseases, and deal with many other sorts of problems.

Science is ongoing. Science is continually refining and expanding our knowledge of the universe, and as it does, it leads to new questions for future investigation. Science will never be "finished." Science is a global human endeavor. People all over the world participate in the process of science.

So what, exactly, is science? Well, science turns out to be difficult to define precisely. (Philosophers have been arguing about it for decades!) The problem is that the term "science" applies to a remarkably broad set of human endeavors, from developing lasers, to analyzing the factors that affect human decision-making.

Science as a collective institution aims to produce more and more accurate natural explanations of how the natural world works, what its components are, and how the world got to be the way it is now. Classically, science's main goal has been building knowledge and understanding, regardless of its potential applications — for example, investigating the chemical reactions that an organic compound undergoes in order to learn about its structure. However, increasingly, scientific research is undertaken with the explicit goal of solving a problem or developing a technology, and along the path to that goal, new knowledge and explanations are constructed. For example, a chemist might try to produce an antimalarial drug synthetically and in the process, discover new methods of forming bonds that can be applied to making other chemicals. Either way (so-called "pure" or "applied" research), science aims to increase our understanding of how the natural world works.

The knowledge that is built by science is always open to question and revision. No scientific idea is ever once-and-for-all "proved." Why not? Well, science is constantly seeking new evidence, which could reveal problems with our current understandings. Ideas that we fully accept today may be rejected or modified in light of new evidence discovered tomorrow. For example, up until 1938, paleontologists accepted the idea that coelacanths (an ancient fish) went extinct at the time that they last appear in the fossil record — about 80 million years ago. But that year, a live coelacanth was discovered off the coast of South Africa, causing scientists to revise their ideas and begin to investigate how this animal survives in the deep sea.

Despite the fact that they are subject to change, scientific ideas are reliable. The ideas that have gained scientific acceptance have done so because they are supported by many lines of evidence. These scientific explanations continually generate expectations that hold true, allowing us to figure out how entities in the natural world are likely to behave (e.g., how likely it is that a child will inherit a particular genetic disease) and how we can harness that understanding to solve problems (e.g., how electricity, wire, glass, and various compounds can be fashioned into a working light bulb). For example, scientific understandings of motion and gases allow us to build airplanes that reliably get us from one airport to the next. Though the knowledge used to design airplanes is technically provisional, time and time again, that knowledge has allowed us to produce airplanes that fly.

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private institution that was founded in 1746. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 5,336, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 600 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Princeton University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 1. Its tuition and fees are $40,170 (2013-14).

Princeton, the fourth-oldest college in the United States, is located in the quiet town of Princeton, N.J. Within the walls of its historic ivy-covered campus, Princeton offers a number of events, activities and organizations. The Princeton Tigers, members of the Ivy League, are well known for their consistently strong men’s and women’s lacrosse teams. Students live in one of six residential colleges that provide a residential community as well as dining services but have the option to join one of more than 10 eating clubs for their junior and senior years. The eating clubs serve as social and dining organizations for the students who join them. Princeton’s unofficial motto, "In the Nation’s Service and in the Service of All Nations," speaks to the university’s commitment to community service.

Princeton includes highly ranked graduate programs through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. One unique aspect of Princeton’s academic program is that all undergraduate students are required to write a senior thesis. Notable alumni include U.S. President Woodrow Wilson; John Forbes Nash, subject of the 2001 film "A Beautiful Mind"; model/actress Brooke Shields; and First Lady Michelle Obama. According to Princeton legend, if a student exits campus through FitzRandolph Gate prior to graduation, he or she may be cursed never to graduate.

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private institution that was founded in 1636. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 6,658, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 5,076 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Harvard University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 2. Its tuition and fees are $42,292 (2013-14).

Harvard is located in Cambridge, Mass., just outside of Boston. Harvard’s extensive library system houses the oldest collection in the United States and the largest private collection in the world. There is more to the school than endless stacks, though: Harvard’s athletic teams compete in the Ivy League, and every football season ends with "The Game," an annual matchup between storied rivals Harvard and Yale. At Harvard, on-campus residential housing is an integral part of student life. Freshmen live around the Harvard Yard at the center of campus, after which they are placed in one of 12 undergraduate houses for their remaining three years. Although they are no longer recognized by the university as official student groups, the eight all-male "final clubs" serve as social organizations for some undergraduate students; Harvard also has five female clubs.

In addition to the College, Harvard is comprised of 13 other schools and institutes, including the top-ranked Business School and Medical School and the highly ranked Graduate Education School, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Law School and John F. Kennedy School of Government. Eight U.S. presidents graduated from Harvard College, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Other notable alumni include Henry David Thoreau, Helen Keller, Yo-Yo Ma and Tommy Lee Jones. In 1977, Harvard signed an agreement with sister institute Radcliffe College, uniting them in an educational partnership serving male and female students, although they did not officially merge until 1999. Harvard also has the largest endowment of any school in the world.

Yale University

Yale University is a private institution that was founded in 1701. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 5,405, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 342 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Yale University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 3. Its tuition and fees are $44,000 (2013-14).

Yale University, located in New Haven, Conn., is known for its excellent drama and music programs, which reach outside the classroom with student organizations such as the Yale Whiffenpoofs, a famous a cappella group, and the Yale Dramatic Association. The Yale Bulldogs compete in the Ivy League and are well known for their rivalry with Harvard. Students are assigned to live in one of 12 residential colleges during their time at Yale. Each college has a master and dean who live in the college and eat with students in the dining halls. Cultural houses provide a space for students to build a sense of cultural identity on campus.

Yale is comprised of the College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and 13 professional schools. Included in the professional schools are the top ranked Law School and highly ranked School of Management, School of Medicine , School of Art and School of Nursing. The School of Drama, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Divinity School are also well-regarded graduate programs. The Yale Record is the oldest college humor magazine in the nation. Dwight Hall is an independent umbrella organization that fosters student service and activism in the local New Haven community. Yale is well known for its secret societies, the most famous of which are the Skull and Bone Society, which boasts members such as George W. Bush and John Kerry, and the Scroll and Key Society. Distinguished Yale alumni include actress Meryl Streep, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and actor Edward Norton.