Posts about undergraduate students

Cleaning Up the Plastic Pollution in Our Oceans

This is an interesting talk on an important topic: cleaning up plastic in the ocean. ,a student from the Netherlands, looked to find a solution to a problem others said couldn’t be solved.

This is exactly the type of wonderful activity that inspired people can accomplish using science and engineering. He collected an understanding of the 50 issues that supposedly makes a solution impossible.

After getting funding (sparked by an explosion of viral social media) he worked on exploring the “insolvable” problems (having withdrawn from school to work on this problem). It is wonderful to see what we can do when inspired people use science and engineering to make the world a better place.

From their website, The Ocean Cleanup

In the feasibility report, we estimated that a 100-kilometer array operating in the North Pacific gyre for 10 years could remove 42% of the plastics in the area, or an estimated 70 million kilograms.

The plastic will be stored in an internal buffer within the platform at the tip of the V-shaped array. The plastic in the buffer will regularly be emptied onto a vessel that comes to collect it for transport to land. This will occur approximately once every six weeks, depending on the size of the vessel.

Besides monetary support, your relevant knowledge and skills may be a very welcome addition to The Ocean Cleanup. Our work requires not only scientific and technical expertise, but also assistance with legal, commercial and policy matters. If you would like to get actively involved in our work, If you would like to get actively involved in our work, please visit the careers page.

They aim to put a full scale pilot project in place in 3 to 4 years.

Related: Albatross Chicks Fed Plastic Ocean Pollution by ParentsAltered Oceans: the Crisis at Sea (2006)Using Robots to Collect Data on our OceansDead Zones in the Ocean

RoboBoat 2014 – Student Designed Autonomous Boats

The first video gives a recap of RoboBoat 2014. In 2014, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University took 1st place. University of Florida was 2nd, followed by the Robotics Club at UCF and in 4th place the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The teams must design and build an autonomous boat to compete in challenges. During the competition, student teams race their autonomous surface vehicles through an aquatic obstacle course. This includes littoral area navigation, channel following, and autonomous docking. The competition provides an opportunity for students to develop skills in system engineering by accomplishing realistic missions with autonomous vehicles in the maritime environment.

A team participated from Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia, which is next to me – though about as far from the finals as you can be on the globe.

Related: 9th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition20th Annual US First Robotics CompetitionBotball 2009 FinalsRobo-One Grand Championship in Tokyo (2007)Eco-Vehicle Student Competition

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STEM Graduates in the USA: 465,000 Women and 451,000 Men

STEM baccalaureate degrees in the USA in 2010 (reported by NSF in 2014):

Field Women
  
Men
Science (including math) 442,000 343,000
Engineering 23,000 108,000
Health 193,000 36,000
Total 658,000 486,000

If you exclude health, women still lead 465,000 to 451,000.

The same data for master’s degrees:

Field Women
  
Men
Science (including math) 86,000 72,000
Engineering 14,000 49,000
Health 97,000 22,000
Total 197,000 147,000

Excluding health the totals are: women 100,000, men 125,000.

In 2005, 235,197 women received undergraduate science and engineering degrees, compared to 230,806 for men. In 2005, 53,051 women received masters science and engineering degrees, compared to 66,974 men. All increased a large amount from 2005 to 2010 and degrees awarded to women increased much faster than the increase seen for men.

As I predicted in 2008 (Women Choosing Other Fields Over Engineering and Math) the trends continued and resulted in large imbalances in favor of women at the undergraduate level for science related degrees.

At the masters level women continue to increase degrees (nearly doubling from 2005 to 2010 excluding health). The relative gains (compared to men) at the masters level are small in that 5 year period, but it seems to me the news is mainly good. I expect women will show relative gains at the masters and PhD levels going forward, though those gains may well be slower than they were at the undergraduate level.

STEM fields continue to show large gender imbalances (with women and men dominating certain fields and being relatively rare in others). Continuing to provide opportunities for talented and interested students to explore their field of choice is important for the students well being and for the well being of society. We want to take advantage of the great minds we have and not have people excluded from pursuing their dreams.

Related: Alternative Career Paths Attract Many Women in Science FieldsThe USA is Losing Scientists and Engineers Educated in the USA

Starting a Career in Science to Fight Cancer

Keven Stonewall Preventing Colon Cancer from VNM USA on Vimeo.

Keven Stonewall is a student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison working to prevent colon cancer.

Related: I Always Wanted to be Some Sort of ScientistHigh School Student Creates Test That is Much More Accurate and 26,000 Times Cheaper Than Existing Pancreatic Cancer TestsWebcast of a T-cell Killing a Cancerous Cell

Scientists Don’t Look Like They Do in Movies

The Myth of the Scientist: Crystal Dilworth at TEDxYouth@Caltech

Scientists don’t fit the stereotypical mold some people think they do. It doesn’t take much to replace those views. The main point, in my opinion, is to let kids know they can be a scientists even if they are not like the stereotypical examples – though it will take a lot of work.

Related: Movie Aims to Inspire College Students With Tales of Successful Minority ScientistsWomen Working in ScienceCitizen ScientistsScientists Singing About Science

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No Surprise: Engineering Graduates Continue to Reign Supreme

If you want a high paying job upon graduation choosing to major in engineering is a great choice, for those that enjoy it and are able to meet the challenge. This data is for the USA. My guess is that similar results would show up in most locations, but I am just guessing, I don’t have any specific data.

The top average starting salary paid USA under-graduates by major:

major
   
2012 salary
computer engineering $70,400
chemical engineering $66,400
computer science $64,400
aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering $64,000
mechanical engineering $62,900
electrical/electronics and communications engineering $62,300
civil engineering $57,600
finance $57,300
construction science/management $56,600
information sciences and systems $56,100

NACE salary survey

This continues a long term trend of engineering major being rewarded: Engineering Majors Hold 8 of Top 10 Highest Paid MajorsEngineering Again Dominates The Highest Paying College Degree ProgramsS&P 500 CEO’s: Engineers Stay at the TopCareer Prospect for Engineers Continues to Look Positive.

Overall starting salaries were up 3.4% to $44,455. Engineering major starting salaries increased 3.9%, to $61,913. Computer science is the 2nd highest paid broad major category at $59,221 (up 3.8%). Next is business at $53,900 (up 4.2%). At the bottom of both average pay and increase was humanities and social sciences with $36,988, up 2%.

The highest-paying industry for Class of 2012 graduates in this report is mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; employers in this industry offered starting salaries that averaged $59,400.

The mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction industry also has the top-paying occupations for Class of 2012 graduates. Mechanical engineering graduates hired as petroleum, mining, and geological engineers received starting salaries that averaged $77,500.

As I have said before, I believe it is foolish to pursue a career in a field that doesn’t interest you. Pay doesn’t make up for doing something you don’t enjoy. But if you enjoy several things somewhat equally pay is worth paying attention to.

2012 Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education

I have posted on the Olin College of Engineering several times. I really like what they are doing. Innovation in engineering education will pay high dividends, especially providing a focus on the nexus of engineering and entrepreneurship.

Olin College of Engineering’s three founding academic leaders, Richard Miller, David Kerns and Sherra Kerns, received one of engineering’s highest honors – the Bernard M. Gordon Prize. The $500,000 prize is awarded by the National Academy of Engineering to recognize innovation in engineering and technological education.

“This team of educational innovators has had a profound impact on society by improving the way we educate the next generation of engineers,” said NAE President Charles M. Vest. “Olin serves as an exemplar for the rest of the engineering world and a collaborative agent for change.”

Armed with one of the largest gifts in the history of higher education, the F. W. Olin Foundation recruited Richard Miller as Olin’s first employee in 1999. To help build the college from scratch, Miller recruited the founding academic leadership team including David Kerns and Sherra Kerns later that year. Together, they developed a vision for an engaging approach to teaching engineering and a new culture of learning that is intensely student centered.

To insure a fresh approach, Olin does not offer tenure, has no academic departments, offers only degrees in engineering, and provides large merit-based scholarships to all admitted students.

Perhaps the most important contribution the Gordon prize recipients made was the creation of a profoundly inclusive and collaborative process of experimentation and decision-making involving students in every aspect of the invention of the institution. This is illustrated by the decision in 2001 to recruit 30 young students to spend a year as “partners” in residence with the faculty in conducting many experiments together before establishing the first curriculum.

“As entrepreneurs, we learn to listen to our customers. Olin’s innovative approach was co-created by enterprising faculty, inspired students, and a dedicated staff, as well as collecting and integrating innovative approaches from more than 30 other institutions worldwide,” said David Kerns, current faculty at Olin and founding provost and chief academic officer of the college from 1999 to 2007.

With the extensive help of a collaborative team of faculty and students, and the guidance of the late Dr. Michael Moody, a novel academic program emerged. Some of the features include a nearly gender-balanced community, a strong focus on design process throughout all four years, extensive use of team projects, a requirement that students repeatedly “stand and deliver” to the entire community at the end of every semester, an experiential requirement in business and entrepreneurship, a capstone requirement outside of engineering, and a year-long corporate-sponsored design project in which corporations pay $50,000 per project.

Related: Illinois and Olin Aim to Transform Engineering EducationWebcast: Engineering Education in the 21st CenturyImproving Engineering EducationHow the Practice and Instruction of Engineering Must Change

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Student Engineers Without Borders Project: Learning While Making a Difference in Kenya

photo of workers digging a large hole dug for the bio-gas latrine, while schoolchildren look on.

Engineers Without Borders students make progress, learn lessons in Kenya

Knowing nothing about Third-World development, the original [Engineers Without Borders] EWB students accepted an assignment from the national EWB to bring clean water wells and sanitary latrines to 58 elementary schools in the poor Khwisero district, where villagers live by subsistence farming.

Each year, new MSU students take up the challenge, aiming not only to provide healthier drinking water but to relieve Kenyan children of the chore of hiking more than a mile to fetch water every day from dirty water holes, which cuts into their schooling, particularly for girls.

They finally broke ground on their first pipeline system, which has been three years in the making. It will bring piping water from a high-quality well to several villages and eventually to a health clinic and a market. Villagers have committed to digging trenches for the water pipes.

This is a great program. Students learn a great deal by taking on real world problems and implementing solutions. As I have said before, I really love to see appropriate technology solutions put in place. We can drastically improve people’s lives by helping put solutions in place that work, are cost effective and can be maintained. Improving people’s quality of life is at the core of why engineering is so wonderful.

Related: Smokeless Stove Saves LivesEngineering a Better World: Bike Corn-ShellerHigh School Inventor Teams @ MIT Bring Clean Water to VillageWater and Electricity for All
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Career Prospect for Engineers Continues to Look Positive

As I have written previously the career prospects for engineers are bright around the globe. Many countries realize the importance of engineering and have taken steps to compete as a center of excellence for engineering. It is a smart economic policy. Ironically, the USA, that did such a great job at this in the 1960’s and 1970’s, has been falling down in this regard. A significant reason for this is the USA can only fund so many things and a broken health care system, military complex, bailouts to bankers (trust fund babies and others) cost a lot of money. You chose what to fund, and those are taking much of the available USA funds. There are also non-economic reasons, such as the turn in the last decade in the USA to make the barriers for foreigner engineers (and others) to go through to go to school, visit and stay in the USA have all increased dramatically.

Back to the prospects for engineers: their are shortages of good engineers all over (and the future projections don’t show any reason to believe this will change). Germany Faces a Shortage of Engineers:

In June, the Association of German Engineers (VDI) reported that there were 76 400 vacant engineering jobs—an all-time high.

Policymakers in Berlin have responded to the shortage of skilled workers with a number of measures, including changes in immigration rules that allow German companies to hire engineers from other countries, including those outside of the European Union. Among them: The annual salary that companies must pay foreigners has been lowered from 60,000 Euro (US $95,000) to 40,000 Euro, which is roughly the starting salary of an engineering graduate in Germany…

To make it easy for engineers to move around Europe, engineering associations and other groups across Europe are working with the European Commission (the executive arm of the European Union) to launch the new Engineering Card. The card, which German engineers can apply for now and other countries are planning to launch, provides standardized information about the engineer’s qualifications and skills for greater transparency.

“We don’t expect many engineers will come, because among other reasons, there is a shortage of engineers across Europe,”

Related: Engineering Again Dominates The Highest Paying College Degree ProgramsS&P 500 CEO’s: Engineers Stay at the TopChina’s Technology Savvy LeadershipEngineers: Future ProspectsEconomic Strength Through Technology Leadership

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Increasing the Undergraduate Study of Programing and Software

There is a role for computer science. It also seems to me there is a much larger role for some study of computing (programing, databases, software, technology) that isn’t actually computer science. Where exactly this should go into an undergraduate school, I am not sure. But it seems to me, an understanding of computing is extremely important to those that want to lead in the next 40 years and we should be able to put more of that into undergraduate studies.

Computer Studies Made Cool, on Film and Now on Campus

The number of computer science degrees awarded in the United States began rising in 2010, and will reach 11,000 this year, after plummeting each year since the end of the dot-com bubble in 2004, according to the Computing Research Association, which tracks enrollment and degrees. Enrollment in the major peaked around 2000, with the most degrees — 21,000 — awarded four years later. The number of students who are pursuing the degree but have not yet declared their major increased by 50 percent last year.

To capitalize on the growing cachet of the tech industry, colleges nationwide, including Stanford, the University of Washington and the University of Southern California, have recently revamped their computer science curriculums to attract iPhone and Facebook-obsessed students, and to banish the perception of the computer scientist as a geek typing code in a basement.

Even universities not known for computer science or engineering, like Yale, are seizing the moment. The deans of the Ivy League engineering schools recently started meeting to hatch ways to market “the Ivy engineer.”

The new curriculums emphasize the breadth of careers that use computer science, as diverse as finance and linguistics, and the practical results of engineering, like iPhone apps, Pixar films and robots, a world away from the more theory-oriented curriculums of the past.

I think the basic thrust of this move is good. I am not sure if it is really right to expand computer science to make it more attractive or to instead create something else. Computer engineering would seem to be one option, but I am not sure that is really right either. We do need computer scientists, but frankly we need maybe 100 or 1,000 times more programmers. And we need many other UX designers, program managers that understanding technology and programing, database administrators, system administrators… and really these people don’t need computer science backgrounds.

On a separate topic we also need better ways for everyone to understand technology better. We need good course for those majoring in economics, business, philosophy, English, political science… Understanding technology and how it works is fundamental to managing in the world we live in today and will live in.

Related: Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real WorldHow To Become A Software Engineer/ProgrammerEngineering Again Dominates The Highest Paying College Degree ProgramsWant to be a Computer Game Programmer?software programming posts on my management blog

Engineering Again Dominates The Highest Paying College Degree Programs

As usual most of the highest paying undergraduate college degrees in the USA are engineering. Based on data from payscale, all of the top 10 highest paying fields are in engineering. The highest non-engineering fields are applied mathematics and computer science. Petroleum Engineering salaries have exploded over the last few years to $93,000 for a starting median salary, more than $30,000 above the next highest paying degree.

Mid-career median salaries follow the same tendency for engineering degrees, though in this case, 3 of the top 10 salaries (15 years into a career) are for those with non-engineering degrees: applied mathematics, physics and economics.

Highest Paid Undergrad College Degrees
Degree Starting Median Salary Mid-Career Median Salary 2009 starting salary
Petroleum Engineering $93,000 $157,000
Chemical Engineering $64,800 $108,000 $65,700
Nuclear Engineering $63,900 $104,000
Computer Engineering $61,200 $99,500 $61,700
Electrical Engineering $60,800 $104,000 $60,200
Aerospace Engineering $59,400 $108,000 $59,600
Material Science and Engineering $59,400 $93,600
Industrial Engineering $58,200 $97,400 $57,100
Mechanical Engineering $58,300 $97,400 $58,900
Software Engineering $56,700 $91,300
Applied Mathematics $56,400 $101,000
Computer Science $56,200 $97,700 $56,400

Related: PayScale Survey Shows Engineering Degree Results in the Highest Pay (2009)Engineering Majors Hold 8 of Top 10 Highest Paid Majors (2010)Engineering Graduates Get Top Salary Offers in 2006Shortage of Petroleum Engineers (2006)10 Jobs That Provide a Great Return on Investment

More degrees are shown in the following table, but this table doesn’t include all the degree; it just shows a sample of the rest of the degrees.
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