(06-14-2023 05:43 PM)DawgNBama Wrote: (05-09-2023 05:10 PM)SouthernConfBoy Wrote: (05-09-2023 04:58 PM)ChrisLords Wrote: (05-09-2023 04:45 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: (05-09-2023 04:32 PM)SouthernConfBoy Wrote: GT's undergraduate focus is the same as it's graduate research focus. Therefore they widget stamp "Helluva Engineers" out of all who enter. It's a STEM way of seeing the world. In the STEM world right and wrong exist and wrong is to be crushed by rigorous math and calculations.
https://catalog.gatech.edu/academics/und...um/ethics/
That seems like an awful lot of ethics courses for your average engineer. How many does your average engineer have to take to graduate?
VT and State College do not produce "average engineers".
That said - NC State and VT are cow colleges and that means the Land Grant and Extension Services are embedded. My observation is that produces a different type of engineer all across the board. There is an acquiescence to practicality at the Land Grant that can be pushed down at GT, MIT, etc., etc.
The need to teach larger scale ethics to these people is a result of the collapse of many elements of civic and religious life that taught community over self. Sometimes really technical people become parallelized choosing between bad choices when a choose must be made.
As a failed Architect/Engineer (differential equations), I emphatic with this breed but you need two bridles on a good engineer or architect.
I realize that I am replying to an old post, but SouthernConfBoy, how would you rank VT's & NC State's engineers in comparison to Auburn's??? Doesn't Auburn have a similar mission/similar standards to VT & NC State??
Auburn, Pitt, and UF all come in around 45-55 in most measures of academics related to Engineering.
Auburn in particular is dinged by its proximate location to GT and that fact that Redstone and Huntsville is located up north instead of southeast. GT is a top 5 program. Huntsville is top 75 (so is Clemson).
Duke, NC State, and VT are top 20-30 engineering schools. UVa is about 35-40.
Research specialties and history help to define what exists today. If you have or had a nuclear reactor for instance, if you do work for DARPA, or if you are in a growing state that needs bridges and complicated piping and pumping systems for water, sewer, etc.
NC State is held back a little by direct competition with Pratt at Duke. (Piss on you Duke and your Harry Potter cloak).
Clemson is where it is because Clemson was always small, rural, and male for most of its existence. No one was moving to western SC to research a damn thing until a decade after the Germans and BMW said it was okay. But the State of SC remains small and if you can get into GT, or MIT, or Cal Tech, that is where you are going even if you are a Sandlapper. Likewise, if you can get into GT and you were born in eastern Alabama, Atlanta was likely your defacto cultural capital anyway. If you get lucky you might meet a girl in Med school at Emory or be able to impress a coed down at Mercer.
I've known just one Auburn engineer in my entire life, and they were attached to industry in Sylcauga.
I find most people mean Civil Engineering when they just say Engineering. Even that breeds specialties - folks who work at the Beach, who work on "Sugar" sands, who work in hard rock mountains, who work in the Clay holes, etc.
I would think Tim Cook of Apple is Auburn's highest profile grad, but then Duke got a hold of him. I can't determine if he really was an EE, ME, or CE as if any of that matters.