Engineering Education

An Engineer’s Life (with 2 weeks experience!)

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Some good advice and observations from a new Electrical Engineering student. Nice writing too!

JawadAtWaterloo

Hello people! How y’all doing?

First of all, I got a new computer for school (Yayyy!). This is my first blog post in this new computer, so I thought I should talk a little about the necessity of getting a new computer for Engineering. I would not say that you really need a new computer for Engineering, but sometimes you do need to run software like AutoCad, programming compilers and so on. If you feel that your computer is very slow with multitasking, or that it has poor battery life and portability, I would probably start saving up for a new computer. Not something fancy for sure, but something that is able to manage everyday work and still handle some rigorous software needs. (My new computer, by the way, is a i5 core with 8 GB RAM and 1 TB HDD).

How’s Engineering, you ask? If I were to answer…

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Engineering Economics

/ profbillanderson / 4 Comments

All engineering programs in Canada are required to include content on “Engineering Economics”.  At Waterloo, students in most programs take MSCI 261 Engineering Economics:  Financial Management for Engineers.  I also include some capital and operating cost estimation in the CHE 480 course I teach (Process Analysis and Design).

These are not your typical economics courses, like ECON 101, looking at consumers, outputs, markets, money supply and all that stuff.  Engineering economics is much more project-oriented, so it teaches techniques for comparing different options.  For example, given certain capital and operating costs and lifespans, is it better to purchase Machine A or Machine B?  To illustrate, let’s compare the costs of 4 university engineering programs, namely:  Waterloo stream 8, Waterloo stream 4, Toronto-PEY, and Toronto-regular. Continue reading →

Things People Say About Co-op

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Engineering Five building at the University of...

Engineering Five building at the University of Waterloo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of Waterloo Engineering’s major features for the past 50+ years has been the co-operative education system (“co-op”), where students alternate every 4 months (more or less) between academic classes on-campus and relevant work experience somewhere out there in the “real world”.  In our system, Engineering students get 6 work opportunities, therefore 6 x 4 months = 24 months of work experience before graduation.  There are various websites available giving more information and other details, including this one or this one.  Over the years I’ve heard a number of comments and questions about co-op, and thought it might be useful to summarize some of the common and interesting ones here.

Continue reading →

Comparing Software Engineering to Computer Science

/ profbillanderson / 12 Comments

A couple of previous posts have looked at the differences in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, from my simple perspective and from a new student viewpoint.  Below are some (updated) comments from an academic expert viewpoint, as prepared by Prof. Patrick Lam in the Department Electrical and Computer Engineering (and the Associate Director of the Software Engineering program).  If there are questions or comments, I’ll ask him to respond.  Note that at Waterloo you can apply to both Software Engineering and Computer Science.  They are treated independently for admissions, so you could get two separate offers.

Comparing the BSE in Software Engineering to the BCS in Computer Science

Our Bachelor of Software Engineering degree is an accredited computer science degree, and BSE students take many of the same CS core courses as BCS students. In addition, Software Engineering (BSE) students also take computer engineering (CE) courses and the engineering core, thus satisfying the requirements to be a CEAB-accredited Engineering programme. Like all engineering students, BSE students follow a rather regimented programme and learn about the physical world. BCS students enjoy more flexibility.

Employment outcomes from the BASc in Computer Engineering, the BSE, and the BCS are broadly similar. What you get out of a university education depends less on your specific courses and more on what you put into your courses, your interaction with peers, and your work experience. However, the programmes do differ. To help you choose which programme is the best fit for you, here are some of my personal observations about cohorts and courses. Continue reading →

Computer vs Software vs CS

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What is the difference between Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, and Computer Science?  This is a perennial question and generates a lot of interest from potential applicants.  I had a post on this topic (and there is some very good discussion in the comments section that follows).

Some of our incoming first year engineering students have recently produced a nice blog post on the differences.  Since they recently went through the process of researching, comparing and contrasting the programs, it provides a unique perspective from an  applicant’s point of view.  Have a look at their post and blog here.

Note that at Waterloo, if you have interest in Software Engineering and Computer Science, you can apply to both and potentially have two different offers .

If You Want to Be an Entrepreneur, Don’t Go to Harvard | LinkedIn

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Below is the introduction from an interesting article on LinkedIn (follow the link at the end for the complete thing).  Essentially, his thesis is that the most “elite” or “prestigious” colleges/universities cost so much that your entrepreneurial options after graduation are limited (in the title, “Harvard” is used figuratively to represent expensive schools).  He recommends going to a cheaper school that you can more easily afford, so you don’t build up a crushing debt.  (I’ll add that universities with paid internships or co-ops are a good way of minimizing debt too!).  The article is well worth reading.

August 16, 2013

Vivek Wadhwa

Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University

My greatest disappointment after joining academia was to see my most promising students accept jobs at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. Engineering students with ambitions to save the world would instead become financial analysts—who used their skills to “engineer” our financial system. Or they would take grunt jobs in management consulting—another waste of valuable talent.

Why would they sell their souls? Because they had no choice, the burden of debt they amassed while getting their degrees was just too great. They had six-figure student loans to repay and couldn’t take the risk of joining a startup or founding their own business.

…(click link below for the rest)

via If You Want to Be an Entrepreneur, Don’t Go to Harvard | LinkedIn.

Students’ use of laptops in class found to lower grades – The Globe and Mail

/ profbillanderson / 6 Comments

Below is an article summarizing a study that measured the potential negative effects of bringing a laptop to lectures, i.e. you end up with lower grades.  The study confirms what many professors informally observe, and what has been measured in other studies, such as a couple described in this document from Stanford’s website.

For note-taking in engineering classes, laptops are almost useless.  Pen and paper may be old-fashioned, but it’s still the quickest and easiest medium for quick sketches, free body diagrams, derivations of equations full of Greek symbols, etc.  We recommend (and some professors insist) that you leave the laptops at home or in your bag.

I see very few, if any, laptops in the lectures for the fourth-year (senior) courses I teach.  Since fourth-year students are the ones who successfully got through the first three years, that’s probably a good hint for first year students. Continue reading →

Ideas start here

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Here’s a nice short video about innovation at Waterloo. Our Creative Services department always does a nice job on various materials, including this video. I like the part about “Bring us your curiosity…imagination…drive”. I think that nicely captures the spirit of the types of students we hope to attract to Engineering.

bethbohnert

Script and concept: Beth Bohnert
Production: Creative Services, University of Waterloo

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Co-op Education: Try before you buy

/ profbillanderson / 1 Comment

In the Globe & Mail newspaper, there is a short opinion article about the value of co-operative education (i.e. a structured mixing of academics and work experience).  It’s written by one of our Systems Design Engineering graduates, Andrew D’Souza, who is now COO of the educational software company Top Hat (yet another Waterloo engineering student start-up).

Andrew’s points are similar to what Waterloo’s literature tries to get across, but he is much more blunt about it.  For example, in the article he says:

If university degrees came with a 90-day refund policy, I think we’d see a lot of unemployed students waiting in the returns line. Co-op programs are as close to a “try before you buy” deal as we’ll see in higher education anytime soon.

He also explains how he started in university with some pre-conceived notions about a career path, and how these quickly changed once he saw what it was actually like during a co-op work term.  Hence the “try before you buy” idea, and the remaining work terms are an opportunity to switch gears to alternative paths, as he explains.  When I talk to our students, this is a fairly common point that comes up in one way or another.

It’s an interesting article from someone with first-hand experience and a few years after graduation to reflect back on how it helped shape his path.

Engineering Failure Rates

/ profbillanderson / 8 Comments

We typically get a few questions each year about our failure rate.  I’m never quite sure why people ask, or what they are expecting.  Do they want to hear that the failure rate is high, so they are convinced it’s a tough (and therefore good) program?  Or maybe they don’t want the failure rate to be high, because they are concerned that they won’t be successful?  I’m not sure what the motivation for the question is, but anyways let’s examine failure rates.  Continue reading →