TMI from your Advisor?
One of the things that I think an advisor should do is train their students technically (duh!) but also train them about the social-political-monetary issues of working in a competitive environment. I’m not talking about force my students to be Democrats or Republicans, but rather that they should understand that things are much more interlinked than they might believe. For my students that are pursuing academia, I hope that I’m giving them an accurate representation of what it takes to be in the same role that I’m in. For my students that will end up in industry, I hope this at least gives them some insights and clues for what to look for when they’re deciding on a company. I’ll give you a few examples of what I’m talking about. All of my students (4) are currently paid out of startup money, which I’m using to seed projects that I’m…
Advice for parting students
Tomorrow is my last set of classes this semester. I never know what to do the last day of class, as I have to admit to missing the interaction with the students. I have had a couple students who have kept contact with me after taking classes from me, but for the most part, I won’t see them again. I always wonder if there are some great words of wisdom I could share with them. In the past, I’ve also told my classes that I really enjoyed teaching them. This semester, I decided to forego any sentimentalism and show Dave Jones advice to recent grads. Some of the advice is specific to someone who wants to go into hardware design, but a lot of it is good for college students to hear in general. [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daxit0dupF0[/tube] As a student or professor, what do you expect out of the last day of…
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……