Mechanical Engineering Technology Blog

What Kinds of Support Will I Get as a Mechanical Engineering Technology Student at Missouri State?

by

Pursuing any Engineering Technology degree is hard work.  In the Missouri State Mechanical Engineering Technology Program we are very serious about getting you the help that you need to be successful.  When I say “we”, I’m including both our faculty and our current students.

As a faculty, we do all of the traditional things that you might expect in terms of providing support for our students.  We work one on one with each student to guide them through the Mechanical Engineering Technology plan of study.  We provide individualized help for the students in our courses.  We monitor our students progress as they work through the plan of study, and offer guidance and assistance along the way.

Our student organizations, though, do even more.  Our American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) student sections provide peer based one on one homework help and tutoring at multiple times every week.  We have found that often, students who have been through a difficult class in a previous semester are more effective at tutoring than professors!  You can find the current schedule for these homework help sessions here.

These student organizations provide more, in terms of student support, than homework help.  The ASME and SAE student sections will provide you with opportunities to work with a team, and become a team leader.  The SAE student section participates in the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Baja Competition.  Our students design, and then build a Baja style dune buggy, and then compete with student teams from other universities.  The vehicle is judged on speed, stability, engineering design, cost, and other factors.  By participating in this competition, our students gain real world experience that will be valuable to them throughout their careers.

Our student organizations also provide networking opportunities, in which you may meet and get to know engineers and managers from industry.  In this way, you can generate internship opportunities, and ultimately, career opportunities.  They also offer periodic resume writing, interviewing skills, and salary negotiation workshops.  These types of activities will help you hone your soft skills.

Research has shown that membership in a student organization tends to result in a higher level of academic success.  When you participate in these types of activities, you end up learning more about yourself, and more about your strengths.  You have opportunities to find out what you are good at, and to watch how other students handle difficult situations.

In future posts, I’ll be writing about how you can prepare for an academic career in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Missouri State University, about some of the types of laboratory and project based experiences you will have in the Mechanical Engineering Technology Program, and about some of the specialized topics in which you will gain experience in the Missouri State Mechanical Engineering Technology Program.  In the meantime, if I can provide information that is useful to you, please contact me at MET@MissouriState.edu.

Kevin M. Hubbard, Ph.D., CMfgE
Coordinator:  Mechanical Engineering Technology
Missouri State University

 

Why is Project Based Learning so Important?

by

Traditional Engineering education employs Problem Based Learning, which is a style of instruction in which you, the student, attend lectures, take notes, and pass (hopefully) tests.  In the Mechanical Engineering Technology Program at Missouri State University, we focus heavily on Project Based Learning, which is also known as Experiential Learning.  You might think of this instructional style as “learning by doing“.

A Swedish psychologist, Dr. Jean Piaget once said that “Knowledge is a consequence of experience”.  The Project Based Learning style employed by Missouri State’s Mechanical Engineering Technology Program is based on this truth.  You learn much more deeply by “doing” than by “hearing about” engineering techniques.  About 65% of all of the Mechanical Engineering Technology course work that you will complete at Missouri State University has a laboratory intensive or project based component.

As an engineer, you will live in a project based world.  Throughout your career, you will work on a series of design-build-test-deploy projects.  You will be tasked with finding solutions to big, open ended problems, and the solutions to those problems will be embodied in complex, dynamic, elegant mechanisms that you work on a team to design and build.  In the design-build-test-deploy process, you will bring to bear all of the skills you have gained in your course of study in the Missouri State Mechanical Engineering Technology Program.  Your professional career will benefit from the experience that you gained during your time at Missouri State.

An example might help to illustrate here.  This (Spring 2019) semester, I tasked one of our senior design groups with the job of designing, building, and automating a device which would find parts on the loop conveyor in our Flexible Manufacturing System, pick them up, and place them in our numerically controlled machining center to be machined.  For this task, positioning accuracy is critical, since we are holding tolerances measured in thousandths of an inch.

This group came up with TAMMi (Three Axis Manipulator for Material Handling:  integrated).  TAMMi is a dedicated purpose cylindrical configuration robotic manipulator.  TAMMi has three joints (three degrees of freedom) and a positional accuracy of about 0.010 inch.  TAMMi incorporates stepper motor drives, and is controlled using a PC based data acquisition card.

Our project team generated conceptual design alternatives, performed concept selection, and performed detailed material selection and tolerancing analyses.  They then generated a detailed design, built TAMMi, and wrote custom software using the Microsoft Visual Studio programming suite to automate the robotic manipulator.

In performing this project, the team drew upon skills they had acquired in Missouri State’s Mechanical Engineering Technology courses such as Mechanical Design and Analysis, Manufacturing Processes, Systems Integration, Product Conceptualization, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing.  They produced a device which constitutes an elegant mechatronics solution to a real world problem.

In this post, I’ve attempted to give you a feel for what Project Based Learning is, and why it is so valuable to you as a Mechanical Engineering Technology student.  At Missouri State University, we use Project Based Learning extensively to leverage the skills our students gain in Problem Based Learning courses.  Our Mechanical Engineering Technology students complete real world, hands on engineering projects with real schedules, real budgets, and real deliverables.

Please contact me at MET@MissouriState.edu if you’d like further information about the types of laboratory and project based work that you will participate in as a Mechanical Engineering Technology student at Missouri State University.

Kevin M. Hubbard, Ph.D., CMfgE
Coordinator:  Mechanical Engineering Technology
Missouri State University

What Should I do in High School to Become an Engineer?

by

When I was young, long ago in the 1860’s (just joking, it was actually the 1960’s) I lived in a very rural part of Missouri.  The space race was in full swing, and I decided that I wanted to be an Engineer.  The question then became “What do I do to get ready?”.  I wouldn’t be surprised if you have the same question.  Here’s the answer.  Some of it is probably obvious, and some of it may be surprising.

First for the (probably) obvious part.  I would recommend that in High School, you take courses such as Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and all of the Physics courses that your High School offers.  Maybe not so obviously, I recommend that you take English Composition, and any other writing courses that your High School offers.  Let me tell you why.  I was the sixth of seven children in our large family.  Mom and Dad were not wealthy, and when I told my Father that I’d like to go to Engineering school, He said “Your Mother and I want the best for you, but you know that we can’t help you pay for that”.  I did know that, and I told him so.  I would never have dreamed of asking them for money.

For seven years, I worked at various jobs, and saved for college.  I worked as a night mechanic in several service stations.  I worked as a “brush cutter” helping to clear land, and I worked as a machine operator in a machine shop.  I worked on a framing crew, helping to build houses in Austin, Texas.  while I worked in the machine shop, I taught myself to write software (at night), and this lead to a job with an office supply company doing database and software related work.  This was in the very early days of what we then called the PC (personal computer) revolution.

I tell people now that when I worked on a carpentry crew, my product was buildings that didn’t fall down.  When I worked as a machine operator, my product was machined workparts.  When I worked as a mechanic, my product was vehicles that ran well.

Now I’m an Engineer.  My product is written documentation that describes my analyses, and embodies the mechanisms and devices that I have designed, built and automated.

Writing is very important for an Engineer.  So is the ability to speak to groups.  I recommend that you take at least one Public Speaking course.  Engineers are often called upon to make presentations, and the ability to both write and speak well will lead to promotions and pay raises over the course of your Engineering career.

Finally, a few other pieces of advice:

  • Participate in extra-curricular STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) related activities.  Join the Rocket Club, the Math Club, the Robotics Club, or any other group of this type that your High School hosts, and that interests you.
  • Find the right Engineering discipline.  If you like cars, robots, aircraft, spacecraft, or machines in general, Mechanical Engineering Technology is a good fit for you.
  • Practice at being self directed and proactive.  Good Engineers possess those traits.
  • Get some real world experience.  You can work on cars, participate in competitions through extra-curricular organizations such as those that I mentioned previously, or even hold the right kind of part time job to accomplish this.

I hope that this post has provided some useful information with regard to preparation for a Mechanical Engineering Technology degree.  If I can provide any further information, please contact me at MET@MissouriState.edu.

Kevin M. Hubbard, Ph.D., CMfgE
Coordinator:  Mechanical Engineering Technology
Missouri State University

What Kind of Salary Can I Earn with a Degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology?

by

According to a study performed by payscale.com, the average yearly starting salary nationwide for graduates holding the B.S. degree from Mechanical Engineering Technology and similarly named programs was about $51,000.  Salaries for these types of engineering personnel tend to grow exponentially, rising to about $75,000 with about 15 years of experience.

You can maximize your lifetime earning potential, though, with an M.S. Project Management degree from Missouri State University.  As I mentioned in a previous post, engineers tend to make good managers, and ultimately about two thirds of graduates from programs such as the Mechanical Engineering Technology Program at Missouri State University. follow a career trajectory which leads them into management or executive positions.

Couple this with the fact that the “bump” in career earnings potential associated with the Master’s degree is the largest increase, over your career, that you can attain, and the M.S. Project Management degree becomes a very attractive option.

The B.S. Mechanical Engineering Technology/M.S. Project Management Degree combination is powerful.  Together, these two degrees can give you a head start over your competition on the technical/corporate management career trajectory.  You can choose to participate in the accelerated Master’s program and complete the B.S./M.S. combination in only five years.  In the accelerated program, many of the courses you complete during your senior year are counted toward both the B.S. and M.S. degrees.

As you can see, there are numerous career path/trajectory options available to you if you choose Missouri State University as your Mechanical Engineering Technology school.

Please contact me at MET@MissouriState.edu if you’d like additional information regarding Mechanical Engineering Technology salaries and career opportunities.

Kevin M. Hubbard, Ph.D., CMfgE
Coordinator:  Mechanical Engineering Technology
Missouri State University

What Kinds of Jobs Can I Get with a Degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology?

by

Mechanical Engineering Technology graduates work in industry sectors including automotive, equipment and defense, aerospace, medical equipment and devices, renewable energy, industrial equipment, and consumer products.  Mechanical Engineering is the broadest of all of the engineering disciplines.  Any enterprise that produces a product has a need for the skills that Missouri State University Mechanical Engineering Technology graduates possess.  Wherever your passion lies, it is likely that you can establish a Mechanical Engineering Technology career there.  The best thing is that since this discipline is needed by so many different types of companies, it is relatively recession proof!

Typical job titles held by Mechanical Engineering Technology graduates include Design Engineer, Product Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Systems Integration Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, and others.  As your career progresses, you may hold titles such as Project Engineer, Director of Engineering, and Senior Engineer, or move into corporate management as a Manager, Vice President, or President.  There are two primary career paths for graduates of programs such as the Mechanical Engineering Technology Program at Missouri State University.  About one third of Mechanical Engineering Technology degree holders follow the technical career path, and continuously update their engineering skill set over the course of their careers.  Engineers tend to make good managers, though, and so about two thirds of Mechanical Engineering Technologists ultimately enter some type of management career path.

Whichever path you choose, you are very likely to be happy with your career choice.  Mechanical Engineering was rated as one of the top jobs of 2019 by U.S. News and World Report, with a high potential for upward mobility, high pay, and above average flexibility.

In future posts, I’ll be writing about the salary you may expect with a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Missouri State University, about the student support infrastructure that we have put in place, and about how you can prepare for an academic career in Mechanical Engineering Technology.  In the meantime, if I can provide information that is useful to you, please contact me at MET@MissouriState.edu.

 

Kevin M. Hubbard, Ph.D., CMfgE
Coordinator:  Mechanical Engineering Technology
Missouri State University