Reality vs. Virtuality
This week’s Theme Week at Engineer Blogs is dealing with cross functional engineering material. Like most mechanical engineers, I’ve had to do my fair share of other engineering disciplines, mainly civil/structural (on the small scale) and electrical (basic circuits, signal processing). Because ME, EE, and Civil are all what I would consider core engineering disciplines, I think most engineers in one of those three fields should understand the basic concepts of the other two fields. Typically, the fundamental concepts in Civil are easier to understand for a ME. (I mean, you have to know your target to make the right bomb 😀 ). Basic concepts on the EE side are a little harder to grasp because they tend to be more abstract. But if you’ve had to do any programming, you understand Paul Clarke’s underlying argument, even if you don’t get the complete package. As we divert from the core…
Pro/E, My love-hate relationship
PTC’s Pro/Engineer (now called Creo Elements), in my humble opinion, is a terrible software. I say this as someone who used to have a lot of experience with it. I started using Pro/e during my UG freshman year. During my sophomore year, I started being a TA for the class. During that year and the following 3 years, I TA’ed between 4 and 8 sections of Pro/e (and Pro/e2 and Pro/e Wildfire), to hundreds of incoming freshman, getting to the point where I was going over the design lectures and the main prof for the class only showed up for tests. In general, being a TA and pseudo-lecturer gave me some good exposure to how lectures really work in college from the other perspective and it got me over my fear of public speaking. So the intangibles associated with the position were pretty good. But man, Pro/e is a terrible…
Low Hanging Fruit, Salami Style
One of the core things a young faculty member must do is publish. Without publishing, you will not establish yourself in your field, and the lack of results will make it more difficult to get funding. Without funding, you won’t have students to find results and publish, and then the downward spiral continues. In order to avert this process, you need to keep your eyes peeled for some low hanging fruit. That is, topics which haven’t been published before but, once you come across them, they are rather easy to simulate/build/measure/quantify/whatever, making it an easy way to churn out a paper. DrWife, Colleague, and I have been working on one such low hanging fruit, hence I didn’t have time to photoshop some salami onto my low hanging branch. This stemmed from an idea discussed several months ago. With me defending, DrWife and I both interviewing for positions and preparing to…
Jukin’ the Stats
That, to your left, is detective-turn-teacher Roland “Prezbo” Pryzbylewski from HBO’s The Wire. If you have seen The Wire, then you know the phrase “jukin’ the stats”. If not, rent it, buy it, steal it, do whatever you have to do to see it because you’ve missed out on one of the greatest dramas ever to grace a TV screen. In short, The Wire is all about Baltimore in the early 2000s and is centered around Baltimore crime, police work, and city politics. One of the recurring themes in the show is the phrase “jukin’ the stats” which is how the police manipulate the numbers to make crime rates appear to go down. Now, I know I’ve gone far off field so I’m going to bring this back to engineers and engineering. As engineers, we tend to be very good at everyday math. Also, we probably like our data to be presented in…
Solving the World’s Problems
This week’s theme is perceptions of engineers and engineering, and obviously I’m biased. My perception of engineers and engineering is that we make the world better and, through our thought processes, we can save the world. Now some of you are probably thinking, “Hmmm, engineers do create nifty gadgets and build things that save lives, so even though I’m not an engineer, I agree that you make the world better. But save the world? That’s far-fetched.” However, I’m not talking about your cell phone or a MRI scanner. I’m talking about saving the world in a political sense. That’s right, if you replaced Congress with 435 engineers in the House and another 100 in the Senate, you’d save the world. I’ll pause for effect… … And I’m not talking rockstar engineers. But if you take normal, working class engineers with working class families, you would solve most of the issues…
Working Before You’re Working: The Grey Area
Last week, I started a topic on my Fantasy Curriculum (thanks for the title Fluxor!). I was going to finish that on my own blog, but I’m in the middle of packing for an international move and actually move in a few days, so I’m somewhat strapped for time. I will be picking that up this weekend when I’m back in the US. In the meantime, in addition to packing and preparing for the move, I’ve also had to do work for my new position. While it hasn’t been much, I have agreed to do and have done things (committees and such) for the new position even though I don’t officially start for a few more months. This brings up a few important questions. Should someone perform tasks for their new position even though they haven’t officially started? If so, where does one draw the line? I’m pretty sure this a…
Fantasy Curriculum
This post probably won’t win me any favors with faculty in other engineering disciplines but it’s something I think should be investigated as a possible method to improve the undergraduate curriculum (particularly in ME). Since I’m a ME by background, I’ll stick with that curriculum because I know it better than others, but this thought process is probably adaptable to EE, civil, and a few other core engineering disciplines. Most of the courses in a typical ME curriculum center around solid mechanics, dynamics, thermo, some materials, some design, and some lab classes. And with those classes, you generally have to take a few physics classes, a bunch of math/statistics, probably a chemistry, and probably an electrical/controls course. Now here’s the big change. For ME students, all of the engineering/physics/chemistry classes should be taught by ME faculty, not within their own departments. Wait a few seconds to let that seep in……
Networking: More Terrible Jargon
I’m Back! And if last week’s post didn’t get me kicked off Engineer Blogs guest blogger list, this one might! This week’s Theme is Networking and I’m much more snarky when it comes to this topic.  Networking is great when it’s a CAT5 cable because your wireless is on the fritz. Otherwise, I severely dislike the word networking. I put words/phrases like a networking event, functionalized, a setup was realized, think outside the box, and mission statements in the category “don’t ever use” if you want to be taken seriously. (I mean, would you take me seriously if I had the GEARS Mission Statement: Realizing novel, functionalized instruments to expand your networking tools by thinking outside the box to create paradigm shifts? I know I wouldn’t.) The reason I don’t take marketing/business jargon like build your network or expand your network seriously is because the aspect of obtaining a network is treated…
Morphing into the dreaded User Facility
Hi Everyone! I’m GEARS which stands for Grads, Engineering, Academia, Research, and Students. I’m a newly minted PhD student who has accepted a tenure track position at a small Tier 1 private university (dubbed SnowU) starting at the end of this semester. Rather than looking back retrospectively and getting caught with shoulda-coulda-wouldas, I thought I start blogging about my experience transitioning from a wide-eyed PhD student to a refined, distinguished assistant professor. (Well maybe I’m getting carried away here but you get the point.) Blogging helps me jot down thoughts and ideas which will (hopefully) help me mentor students more effectively and run a successful research group while actually reaching students in the classroom. Yesterday, I harped on how Knowledge Learned doesn’t show up anywhere on a company’s balance sheet. That makes it very difficult to explain and justify why you should do something yourself, as a researcher, in a…