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Who Is a PSU Engineering Alum?

AgSurfer

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Aug 9, 2013
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Just curious. Who are the people posting here that got an engineering degree at Penn State? I graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering in 1976 and I’m still working at stuff that’s way too interesting to retire.
 
revenge of the nerds 80s GIF
 
BSEE in 2002 and we also joked that engineering was pre-business. The junior year weed out classes were torture.... I still remember walking out of my ee350 final and there was a guy towards the front of the room crying. If I remember correctly only about 40 percent of the people who stayed in the class passed.
 
I went two years trying to be an Aerospace engineer, after failing physics, twice, I assumed I would not be the best engineer so I switched to Econ. My GPA did much better, along with my ability to graduate…..

Sounds like my adventure, although the killer for me was then Chem 13. What really didn't help was after getting C's in Math 161& 162, I really buckled down and had an "A" going into the 240 Final.

I got a stomach bug (real bug, not alcohol) in the final. I remember panicking because I couldn't concentrate and pretty soon I realized I was in danger of failing the class. I got the bare minimum done to pass-which I think was a 36, went outside, got the full effect of the bug and was relieved when the report card came in with a "D".

Once I started taking econ, I thought I'm home and I don't have to deal with what I thought was an endless array of incomprehensible mysteries like Euler's Identity.

Today, you can look up dozens of videos that demystify the damn thing.
 
BSME from ASU. I know it isn't PSU, but it is something.

Now I run a commercial and residential painting company that I have owned for 36 years. I was sitting in a meeting discussing a fan blade for an airplane . We were about .003 of an inch out of desired specifications and I thought that "I have to have something better to do with my life than discuss 3 thousandths of an inch of metal". 6 months later, I was back in Illinois coaching wrestling at my previous university as an assistant making 4,000 dollars.

I did that for 7 years then had 3 as a head coach, until Title 9 claimed our program. Luckily, I started the painting business while coaching and I just went into that full time.

Loved getting the degree, but did not love the corporate world.
 
"Loved getting the degree, but did not love the corporate world."

Well, despite being a Sun Devil, that speaks highly of your character. You produce a finished product of value and it is discrete, tangible and good.

People who love the corporate world are usually passive aggressive sociopaths who never tire of meaningless jargon and cliches "paradigm". By the way, your typical government agency is much like the corporate environment.

They don't mind the soul stealing conformity-especially of the cubicle farms- because they already sold theirs. This is especially true of HR, where the worst of the worst congregate to hatch their evil little plans and screw with other people with impunity. There's nothing more useless than HR. I suspect many of them tormented animals and siblings as children.

To quote Scott Adams "like lawyers, without the charm and verbal skills".

This really does capture the amoral vacuity of your typical denizen of HR.

 
Just curious. Who are the people posting here that got an engineering degree at Penn State? I graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering in 1976 and I’m still working at stuff that’s way too interesting to retire.

Break the ice for ChE…. 69 MS 71 PhD
 
My fifteen year old is thinking Mechanical Engineering. Anyone have any suggestions. Would visiting a ME help solidify his choice?
 
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My fifteen year old is thinking Mechanical Engineering. Anyone have any suggestions. Would visiting a ME help solidify his choice?
Strongly suggest taking your son to this (or something comparable open to the public at a nearby college):


I've been involved with the PSU Learning Factory in the past. Its projects are typically issues the sponsors are facing or have recently faced, so they're real world. Not every project must interest him, but something needs to excite him. It's a great career, but far too demanding to not love it.

Also the best advice I ever received, from my undergrad advisor: don't take a job designing pipes. "Pipes" was metaphorical: he meant things that are fully mature and don't really change. Stagnation is the enemy. I've worked new product development programs for most of my career, and mass-production programs for very little, and am very glad it worked out that way.
 
Great advice above and thanks for giving back to PSU

My brother and I are both ME. Getting into engineering was more gravity from math, science …. My sons are more recent grads in ME and Physics. What stuck me about them was they loved those areas of learning, often talking about it rather than sports, Etc. Their passions for the subjects started from teachers in high school that really inspired them. Pursue the passion!
 
My fifteen year old is thinking Mechanical Engineering. Anyone have any suggestions. Would visiting a ME help solidify his choice?

Aside from whether he would like engineering you should make sure he understands the difficulty. He should take both AP Calc AB and BC. Seeing how he does in those classes will help figure out if he likes the harder STEM path. Also if you get a 4 or 5 on the AP test it will allow you to skip the weed out math classes at Penn State. My daughter did this. She got a 4 on Calc BC and was able to skip both Math 140 and 141. It really helps quite a bit. She was also a Penn State student athlete and graduated on time.
 
Aside from whether he would like engineering you should make sure he understands the difficulty. He should take both AP Calc AB and BC. Seeing how he does in those classes will help figure out if he likes the harder STEM path. Also if you get a 4 or 5 on the AP test it will allow you to skip the weed out math classes at Penn State. My daughter did this. She got a 4 on Calc BC and was able to skip both Math 140 and 141. It really helps quite a bit. She was also a Penn State student athlete and graduated on time.
Adding onto this from a recruiter's perspective:

My 3.1 undergrad GPA was good enough to get interviews from IBM, GE, Boeing, Exxon, etc. That's rare now -- I don't have inteview slots for all of the 3.7s I see at the PSU Career Fair. (Some sub-3.5s do get in, but they need other achievements.)

So IMO all students should do whatever they can to avoid taking the FR/SO weed-out classes at UPark. Place out via AP. Take at a branch campus. Take at a community college. Whatever. If they have to be on the PSU transcript, at least get better instruction.

The classes I'd especially try to take elsewhere are Electro-Magnetic Physics and Differential Equations -- which also means taking their prerequsites elsewhere.
 
I'd also encourage all students (regardless of major) to take 2 classes that don't count toward the major:
- Personal Finance (IMO this should be required in high school)
- Small Business Mgmt -- really good eye-opener for how businesses are run, at the business environment level. Even though I've spent my entire career at a Fortune 50 behemoth, this class really helped me understand how corporate decisions are made.

With time, I'd also suggest a project mgmt class. Even for students who have no interest in mgmt, only want a technical career path, it's very helpful to know how your bosses will manage your work.
 
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I'd also encourage all students (regardless of major) to take 2 classes that don't count toward the major:
- Personal Finance (IMO this should be required in high school)
- Small Business Mgmt -- really good eye-opener for how businesses are run, at the business environment level. Even though I've spent my entire career at a Fortune 50 behemoth, this class really helped me understand how corporate decisions are made.

With time, I'd also suggest a project mgmt class. Even for students who have no interest in mgmt, only want a technical career path, it's very helpful to know how your bosses will manage your work.


I'm not an engineer and I'm biased by having an econ degree, but having worked with engineers in the past-at a company that manufactured cell phone antenna towers-and completely screwed up its entry into what we called the "lattice structure" market -the founder sold the company to an capital management "incubator" and then bought it back at a discount-I wish every engineer took intro and intermediate microeconomics and an industrial organization class. It's important to understand that your "solution" must be not only technically sound, but economically sound as well.

For large companies; it's not uncommon for engineers to pursue MBA's, (I have one of those too) but that's generally for mid to upper managers-and the despite all the marketing, they don't produce deep functional proficiency.
 
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Every engineering student should take a healthy dose of computer programming / computer science as the demand for software engineers is going to continue to rise. I know lots and lots of EEs, MEs, and Aerospace Engineers who had trouble finding jobs in their discipline but are now doing very well writing code. Yes, I'm biased since I have a BS and MS in computer science but that's where the jobs are. The amount of software in pretty much everything will increase dramatically in the future. Learn to code.
 
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