Paths For Engineering Careers

There are hundreds of different paths you can take if you're interested in engineering as a career: a short list of very common engineering paths includes civil engineering, aerospace engineering, environmental engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, safety engineering, genetic engineering, mechanical engineering, and nuclear engineering. An engineer is an applied scientist; he or she takes current scientific developments and, with mechanical and practical knowledge, applies them in practical ways. Inventors are very often engineers. The word engineer does not come from trains, like I thought when I was about six; it actually comes from the Latin word ingenerare, "to create." It's the same root as ingenious, genius, gene, or generate (which, I guess, means that genetic engineering is really creating the creator!) Engineers belong to professional societies which maintain engineering standards through recommendations for educating new engineers and for what continuing education should consist of. Because engineering is a scientific and technical field, it is very important that engineers maintain a high level of knowledge in their chosen career field; an engineer must maintain his credentials through continuing education. While it is the scientist's job to know and understand the world, it's the engineer's job to do stuff with it. Engineering is based largely on physics, chemistry, and math, and by extension on materials science, solid and fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, transfer and rate processes, and systems analysis. It's an engineer who designs your floor fan in such a way that it doesn't overheat and burst into flames, for instance. Thomas Edison was an engineer; he took what he knew about electricity and applied it to the creation of the light bulb. Today, engineering careers need to know as much about using computers in the course of their work as they know about the specific area of science they devise engineering solutions for. Because so much more mathematical power is at their fingertips, engineers today can easily solve complex physical problems in minutes (like keeping that fan from bursting into flames) that would have taken months twenty years ago. Engineering careers can be found on a continuum ranging from very scientific to very management-oriented. The most scientifically oriented levels are the research and development functions, in which engineers take raw scientific data and, basically, invent things to take optimal advantage of new discoveries. Other engineers take those inventions and improve design, choose perfect materials, and work out problems in design; this is the level at which plans are drafted. The next group of engineers in the continuum constructs and produces plants and large constructions, depending on the designs that have been created. An engineer has to operate the plant or invention once it's in place. Finally, on the far end of the management side, there are engineers who have to manage and analyze the requirements of customers and recommend solutions - some of which will be sent to the research and development end for creation. Engineering is a demanding and technically advanced career that requires four to eight years of education, but that pays very well. Engineering careers can be found in almost every technically-oriented industry: mining, health care, biological research, environmentalism, military research. In addition, the government employs thousands of engineers in regulatory and public-service careers. If you like to solve problems as they come to you, if you have a love for math and science, and if you like to have a chance to use creativity to solve complex and often important problems, engineering may be the career path for you.

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