ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND A SUCCESSFUL CAREER

As a practicing engineer, you will work on projects that require a wide range of different engineers and engineering disciplines. Communication among those engineers will be vital to the successful completion of the project. You will be in a better position to communicate with the engineers working on electrical systems of all sorts if you have a basic background in EE. Certainly through this course alone you will not be able to design complicated electrical systems, but you will be able to get a feel of how the system works and be better able to discuss the implications of areas where the non-EE system you are designing and the electrical system overlap. For example, mechanical engineers often design packages for electronic systems where heat dissipation due to electronic components can be a major problem. In this instance, the non-EE engineer should be able to help the EE with component placement for optimum heat dissipation. In short, no engineer works in isolation and the more you can communicate with other engineers the better.

The company that hires you out of engineering school understands how important communication is. Thus, they will most likely have training programs that help their engineers learn more about the specific engineering that they will perform as well as other engineering disciplines with which they will be associated. If you have taken EE as an engineering student, then you will have a good foundation for learning EE topics specific to that company, which will make your on-the-job training easier and, consequently, less expensive for your employer. Saving money for your employer is always a good thing.

So, by having taken an EE course, you will be a more promising hire for many companies.

In addition, there will be instances in your engineering career where you will be working directly with electrical or electronic components that you need to understand in some depth. For example, many engineers work in manufacturing processing and will need to work with products that have electrical/electronic content. Likewise, engineers often work with systems that used to be mechanical, but are now electronic (e.g., electronic fuel injection, electronic gas pedals). In the course of your work, you may also need to perform tests in which the test apparatus uses a Wheatstone bridge. If that is the case, then you need to know how a Wheatstone bridge, which is an electric circuit, works to use the equipment adequately. In addition, most mechanical measurements involve converting the mechanical quantity to an electrical signal. Finally, if you need to purchase electrical components and equipment you will need a fundamental background in EE to talk to the vendor in an intelligent manner and get the type of equipment that your company needs. Thus, by knowing some EE, you will be better able to obtain and use electrical components and electrical equipment.

Another reason for learning the principles and practices of EE is that you may be able to make connections between your engineering discipline and EE that lead to creative problem solutions or even inventions. For instance, maybe your job will require you to monitor a system on a regular basis that requires you to perform a significant number of tedious by-hand techniques.

Your familiarity with the monitoring process, combined with your background in EE, might allow you to teach yourself enough in-depth EE to design and build a prototype monitoring system that is faster and less hands-on. This type of invention could lead to a patent or could lead to a significant savings in monitoring costs for your company. In this scenario, you would have been able to do the work yourself and would thus gain ownership of your work and ideas, that is, the design and fabrication of a prototype monitoring system. Learning EE (as well as other engineering fundamentals outside your specific discipline) may allow you to make connections that could lead to creative solutions to certain types of engineering problems.

In conclusion, studying EE will not only help you pass the FE exam, but it will make you more marketable, give you capabilities that will enhance your engineering career, and increase your self-confidence, all of which may allow you to solve problems in ways you cannot now imagine.