Advanced engineering degrees give grads more control over their careers

Grad programs go beyond engineering principles to ask ‘what if’

“With a graduate degree, you can go far in your field.”
– Stephen Friedfeld, Princeton

By Sue Marquette Poremba
Contributing Editor

'Graduate school offers leadership and management opportunities,” says Stephen Friedfeld, associate dean
of graduate affairs for the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ).

Friedfeld believes that an advanced degree has the potential to open doors far wider than a bachelors. “You can move up and go far in your field,” he states. “You also need an advanced degree to work in academia and research.”

Michael Ruane, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University (Boston, MA), agrees. The benefits of a graduate degree, he says, include more control over your career and the chance to follow different career paths.

Schools reach out to women and minorities
At Texas A&M University (College Station, TX), there
is a concern about the small number of women and minorities enrolled at the grad level. “We want to reflect the population of the state and the nation,” says Robin L. Autenrieth, associate dean for graduate programs. “We also realize that we’re in competition with other schools for the same pool of students.”

To encourage graduate enrollment, the school offers an undergraduate research grant. “It’s an opportunity for undergrads to do research projects with the intent that they’ll be recruited for grad school,” Autenrieth says.

“We recruit at SHPE, NSBE, and similar conferences to bring students from other schools to campus for the summer research program,” she says. Along with the research, the school provides seminars, GRE preparation workshops and professional development opportunities.

Ruane says that Boston University has a unique offering, the Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP). It’s based on a National Science Foundation (NSF) program designed to attract women to engineering by encouraging mid-career women to pursue masters degrees. “When the NSF program ended, we continued LEAP as a tuition program with substantial loans and financial aid,” Ruane says. “We also expanded it to anyone who comes from a non-engineering area and wants to earn a graduate degree in engineering.”

Gale Spak, associate VP of the continuing professional education and distance learning division of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT, Newark, NJ), views a graduate degree as continuing education.

“The school recognizes that most people working on their masters are doing so part time,” she says. “They study at night.” Masters degree programs at NJIT are offered in the evening. “This place hops at night,” she says.

Grads with advanced degrees can have a greater impact
Balaji Narasimhan, associate dean of research and economic development at Iowa State University (Ames, IA), believes that when students understand the benefits of an advanced degree, they’ll be more likely to pursue one.

He emphasizes that “Engineering has a profound impact on our lives. A graduate degree allows you to make an even greater impact at a higher level,” he says.

Narasimhan explains that the undergrad degree applies engineering principles to design, but the graduate degree goes beyond. “The grad program asks ‘what if’ questions or explores why something works,” he notes. “You’re able to ask questions that are deeper than what you get at the undergrad level.”

Autenrieth adds that when a college program reflects the population, you get a workforce that does the same. When engineers connect back to their communities, the population is better served.

The grad school admissions process is different
“Admission to graduate school isn’t as daunting as many people think,” says Friedfeld. “At Princeton, we get fewer applications than students might expect, and many are from students attending public colleges and universities.

“It’s a very different type of admissions process,” he notes. “We look at the type of scholar the student will become. Grades are important, but solid letters of recommendation can be very powerful.”

Allison Schafer: dual masters program at University of Michigan
After her 2008 BSME at Central Michigan University (Mount Pleasant, MI), most of Allison Schafer’s classmates took jobs in industry. But Schafer chose to get a dual masters degree in ME from the college of engineering and the school of natural resources and environment at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI).

Schafer wanted to pursue a career in sustainability and the environment and get involved in high-level design. “I wasn’t able to work on these issues in my undergraduate classes,” she says.

When her professors learned of her intentions, they directed her to the McNair program. There she discovered U Mich’s dual-degree option. “The focus of my program is on sustainability initiatives in design and manufacturing,” Schafer explains.

She notes that the program is filled with people from very different backgrounds. Most of her classmates have been in the fulltime workforce for several years. “I’m working with a guy who’s worked on wind turbines and another who came from Boeing,” she says. “They’re here because sustainability is a big issue.”

This dual-degree program in engineering and sustainable systems, which resides in both the School of Natural Resources and Environment and the College of Engineering, is fairly new at the University of Michigan. Similar programs are available there for civil engineers and chemical engineers.

Schafer says she’ll be in school for at least two-and-a-half years. Her masters project is two summers long. Along with three others, she’s working on plug-in hybrid vehicles with DTE Energy (Detroit, MI). Funding is through a grant from the Michigan Public Service Commission. “We hope to get a lot of papers from our work,” she says, “as well as a new project for DTE.”

Joseph Moore: masters in aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue
A summer research fellowship at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) led Joseph Moore to grad school. “I realized I really enjoyed doing research,” he says.

Moore stumbled on Purdue’s booth at a NSBE convention during his junior
year and learned about the fellowship. He’s back at the school working on his masters in aeronautics and astronautics engineering and hopes to finish by May 2010.

He’s debating going on for a PhD. “It all depends on how my summer internship works out,”
he says. He worked as a process engineer at GE Aviation in Evendale, OH. “If it goes well,
the company has an operations management leadership development program that I’d like
to join.”

As a kid, Moore loved rockets. “I’d sit up late at night, way past my bedtime, watching documentaries on the space program,” he says. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

He was born in Ohio, but grew up ten miles from Auburn University (Auburn, AL) where he earned his 2008 BS in aerospace engineering. Moving to Indiana was a big adjustment for him. “It had been a long time since I’d seen cold weather,” he says.

Moore also found grad school to be more like a job. “As an undergrad, you’re in class a few hours a day, doing homework a few hours a day,” he says. “As a grad student, it’s like you’re getting orders for deliverables from your professors.”

As an undergrad Moore was an active member of NSBE, where he found a network and support system, and he’s continued his involvement at Purdue. “I feel like I owe my success to NSBE,” he says, “and there is no way I can turn my back on them in grad school.”

Moore has been working on efforts to retain minority students based on his own experiences. “When I joined NSBE, I met men and women who were like me and we all walked across the stage together at graduation,” he says. “I want to show other students that they can do it too.”

Sophia Woodley: MS in materials science at Carnegie Mellon
Sophia Woodley earned her 2008 BS and her 2009 MS in materials science at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA). She recently joined the Houston location of Exxon Mobil (Irving, TX). “I interned there in the summer of 2008,” she says, “and they asked me to come back after I got my degree.”

Woodley chose Carnegie Mellon because of its strong engineering reputation. After spending a “diversity weekend” on campus she knew she’d made the right decision. She’d set her sights on biomedical engineering, but changed her major after a materials science class her freshman year.

She felt that her bachelors wasn’t enough. She wanted to go deeper into other areas. “It was also fairly easy for me,” she says. “I was taking grad classes as an undergrad, and it made sense to continue.”

Even though she’d taken graduate-level courses, Woodley says the transition into grad school was difficult. “It was a different mindset,” she says. “The degree of difficulty in the classes
went up.”

She notes that there’s also an expectation that students will find additional information independently. “As a grad student, they know you have the tools to learn on your own,” she says.

Tufts stresses the value of an advanced engineering degree
The school of engineering at Tufts University (Medford, MA) wants to persuade more students to apply for graduate engineering degrees. “If you don’t have a certain number of students, it’s more difficult to get programs off the ground or to get students to take the initiative to begin their own programs,” says Travis Brown, manager of the Center for STEM Diversity.

Brown says Tufts brings students to campus and arranges meetings with professors. “Our challenge is to get our name out there and let students know what our graduate programs have to offer.”

He tells potential students that they can go out to work, but graduate school will give them more options. “A masters or PhD helps you get promoted,” he advises. “Getting students interested in research also helps keep them in the field.”

Carlo Jacob: MS in structural engineering at Tufts
When Carlo Jacob graduated from Tufts University in 2007 with a BSCE, he didn’t know whether to get a job or continue his education. The civil engineering field is broad, and he felt that he didn’t have depth in any specific area. “So I decided on school first,” he says.

Based on his experience in an intro to CE class, he decided to focus on structural engineering. “The class focused on large buildings, tunnels and bridges,” he says. “I knew immediately that things you can see, that have an impact on a city, had an appeal for me.”

Jacob is from Trinidad and Tobago. He says frankly that he chose Tufts because the school offered financial assistance. He was also a swimmer, and at Tufts, he was able to compete at
a collegiate level. His swim team became his support system. “There were several other engineering majors on the team,” he says.

His decision to continue at Tufts was based on the relationships he’d developed and his comfort level at the school and with Boston. “I had something good here and wanted to maintain and develop it further,” he says.

Jacob is currently involved with graduate student government, which has given him the opportunity to work with grad students in all departments.

He’s deep into research for his masters thesis and hopes to graduate in February 2010. He’s already begun his job search. “But I’m going to focus on my thesis and get that finished first,” he says.

Iowa State encourages grad students to focus on the year 2050
Iowa State University has a long history of graduate education in engineering. In fact, Balaji Narasimhan says that the first graduate degree conferred at the school was in engineering.

He notes that one of the school’s hallmarks is its interdisciplinary grad programs. “At Iowa State, the barriers to working with other departments or colleges are very low,” he says.
“The most impact is achieved by interfaces between fields.”

Iowa State’s 2050 Challenge asks students to examine current world issues and develop solutions. This requires innovation, but Narasimhan says that the school also uses a systems approach.

“When you look at a solution, you need to know what has come before it and what will come after,” he says. “We predict big changes in energy, food, clean water, climate change and infrastructure, issues we’ll be facing as we approach 2050.

“Students graduating now are going to be at the height of their careers in 2050,” Narasimhan says. “Will they look back and think they got a lot from their PhDs or will they think they got nothing?”

Diversity is another issue for the school. Twenty percent of all Iowa State grad students pursue engineering degrees. Of those, 20 percent are female, but only three percent are underrepresented minorities.

To address this imbalance, the College of Engineering created a diversity office in 2006 to help recruit and retain women and minority faculty and students. “We need to find ways to increase women and minorities,” he says. “We want our college to look more like the demographics of our nation.”

Kristina Lord: PhD candidate at Iowa State
Kristina Lord came to Iowa State for a PhD in materials science and engineering after a career that included stints at IBM, Intel and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Lord earned her 2003 BS in chemistry at Smith College (Northampton, MA). She hadn’t planned to become a computer science teacher, but the opportunity fell in her lap. “Chemistry isn’t a required class in New York schools, so there aren’t as many opportunities for chemistry teachers,” she says.

But Lord found she didn’t have a passion for teaching. Through networking connections in
the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) she learned about a masters program at Norfolk State University (Norfolk, VA). “I could have chosen chemistry, but the school offered a stipend for a masters
in materials science,” she says. The opportunity to do interdisciplinary research attracted her as well.

After receiving her 2006 MS in materials science, Lord knew she wanted a PhD, but it wasn’t offered at Norfolk State. So she used her networking skills again to explore her options, and settled on Iowa State. She moved to the Midwest and began working on her PhD in materials science. Her passion now, she says, is semiconductors.

Lord’s goal is to work in a research-oriented situation. “Or maybe I’ll start my own business,” she says.

Sonya Lopez: PhD candidate at UCLA
Sonya Lopez spent her undergraduate years at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) training for grad school. As an undergrad, she was involved in several research programs. “The emphasis was to prepare students for grad school,” she says. She finished her BS in civil and environmental engineering in 2007.

Lopez applied to a number of grad school programs. She evaluated funding, connection with researchers and the school’s environment. But as a Los Angeles native she didn’t feel a connection to the other schools she visited. Then she realized, “All the things I was looking for, I had right here. I’d worked with my research project’s principal investigator at UCLA for two years and already had funding in place.”

Lopez is working on a PhD in civil and environmental engineering, specializing in water resource engineering. Her research looks at climate change and its effect on the California wetlands.

“It’s a long-term project where I look at the California watershed, at land cover type,” she explains. She’s analyzing historical climate change and trying to learn how it will affect the future. “I get to combine something that’s a really hot topic with something that is important for the ecosystem.”

Grad school has been a good fit for Lopez because she loves research. “I like the fact that you’re learning and then applying what you learn,” she says. “I like an environment where you’re constantly thinking.”

She doesn’t yet know what her career path will be. “I don’t know if I want to teach,” she says. “I do know I want to do research, and I want to be active in my community.”

Lopez feels that as a woman of color, she can use her degree as a platform to inspire other young women of color. She’s a member of UCLA’s Society of Latino Engineers (www.uclasoles.com), the campus SHPE affiliate, and helps plan programs for middle and high school students that showcase opportunities in engineering. She reaches out to members of her own family in the same way. “I sent a niece to a SHPE conference,” she says with a smile.

Lopez thought grad school would be a walk in the park, especially staying at the same school. But the transition has been a challenge. “I had to train myself to be a grad student,” she says. “You have to refocus your mind and change the way you think.”

WPI: seeking women and minorities in engineering, math and science
Recruiting and maintaining women and underrepresented students is a major focus for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI, Worcester, MA). “We want to give everyone access and the opportunity to succeed in the field of engineering, math and science,” says Dr Nicole Bradford, assistant dean of students and director of diversity programs.

“We’re opening the door and letting them know we’re interested in helping the engineering field increase the number of underrepresented individuals in the industry.”

The school’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) grad program is designed to bridge the gap between WPI and historically underrepresented students.

“We’ve made connections with historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic universities and tribal institutions,” Bradford says. “Working with faculty and department heads at those schools, we’re able to identify strong, academically prepared students that we can bring to campus.”

A graduate degree in engineering is important, Bradford adds, because it gives individuals an edge. “It gives them a solid foundation to succeed.”

Jodi Lowell: MS in materials science at WPI
Jodi Lowell earned her 2008 BS in chemical engineering at WPI, but was not happy with her job choices. She was also interested in research and knew she’d need an advanced degree for that, so she decided to add a new dimension to her academic foundation by continuing at WPI for a masters in materials science.

Lowell has always been interested in materials. She was in charge of materials selection for her senior thesis and thought there was only one kind of steel. “I found that there are a lot more,” she says, “and ended up corroding our apparatus because of that.” She went to the school’s materials science department to use its equipment and was invited to stay. “I took them up on the offer,” she says.

After graduation Lowell hopes to combine her two fields of study in defense work. She’s had two internships with defense contractors and recently worked in the chemistry department at Pratt & Whitney (East Hartford, CT).

“It’s a very good combination between chemistry and materials,” she says. “I’m looking at analyzing different oils coming from airplane engines. From the oil, you can tell what is going on in the engine and which parts are wearing.”

Lowell notes that she’s had to adjust to a different schedule in her transition to grad school.
“As an undergrad, we’d have a week’s break every seven weeks, but in graduate school, it’s thirteen weeks straight,” she says.

Shivon Boodhoo: PhD student at NJIT
When Shivon Boodhoo earned her 2004 BSIE at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT, Newark, NJ), she didn’t think she’d work in industry.

“I’d always loved academia and thought I’d never leave,” she says. But on graduation day she got an offer for an internship at a pharmaceutical company.

She decided to take the position for the summer with the understanding that she’d be returning to school for her masters. Boodhoo had been awarded a Bridges to the Doctorate grant through NSF. To keep the relationship going, the company offered her the opportunity to work as a consultant. “The catch was that I had to study something in pharmaceuticals,” she says.

So Boodhoo got her 2006 masters in engineering management with an emphasis in pharmaceutical management and was offered a fulltime job with the company. But she
missed academia, so the next year she returned to NJIT as advisor in electrical and computer engineering. “That’s my fulltime job now,” she says, “but I’m also working on a PhD in industrial engineering.”

Balancing a fulltime job and PhD studies is a matter of prioritization for Boodhoo. “I try to segment my days,” she says. “It’s easier being on campus, but there is a mental switch when I go from administrator to student.”

Boodhoo’s original plan was to go straight through from her bachelors to her PhD. She says it hasn’t been easy working and attending school at the same time, but believes that her experience has rounded out her personality. “My studies would have been too slanted to pure academics had I gone directly,” she says.

“I can apply real-life applications to what I’m learning in the classroom,” she says. For example, when she was learning about supply chain, she knew what it was like when suppliers were late. “It’s not just statistics and numbers,” she says. “It’s real people, real impact.”

D/C

Sue Marquette Poremba is an engineering and construction writer in State College, PA

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