Archive for category Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Engineering Continuing Education – What Is the Future of Engineering?
With the current down turn in the economy many engineers have loss their jobs or worried that they maybe losing their job soon. Budget constraints both in the public and private sector are forcing to think about how secure the jobs really are. But as we all know this recession will not last forever. Sooner or later the promised recovery will begin. The question is what engineering will benefit from the renewed economy and which ones will not fair so well? There is no real crystal ball, but there are clear indicators that every engineer should be aware of and make preparations accordingly.
Engineers will need to continue their education to stay up with the latest technologies to offer their clients the best solutions. Most of the State Licensing Boards require Professional Engineers to renew their professional licenses periodically with a minimum number of continuing education units. These units are usually Professional Development Hours (PDH) or Continuing Education Units (CEU). One PDH is equivalent to one hour of course education, and one CEU is equivalent to ten PDH or ten hours of course education. Some may find that their profession is not growing or trailing behind may need to change careers or strength their technical knowledge.
One of the best indicators of upcoming markets is to know what the baby boomer generation needs and wants. The baby boomers, the individuals born between 1945 and 1964, are now approaching retirement age. Many will be retiring and will require some medical and health assistance. They will also want medication to appear young as long as possible. Obviously fields that support this industry will do very well. The most likely profession to benefit is Biomedical Engineers. They are necessary to improve new medical devices and equipment. In addition, new facilities will be required for the aging population. Independent Living Facilities and senior communities will rise in demand. This will definitely improve prospects for Civil and Mechanical Engineers.
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Bright Futures Await Those With Electrical Engineering Degrees
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Electric/Electronic is the third largest specialty in the engineering field with 214,000, behind Civil (278,000) and mechanical (238,000). Growth in the field should be steady with the Bureau estimating a need for 11% more between now and 2018. In other words, those with engineering degrees who enter this field should see it follow the national average thanks to retirement, population growth and growth in areas such as micro-electronics and green tech.
While the general public gets the terms mixed up, there is a key difference between Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Electric Engineers focus primarily on power generation, such as power plants and transmission infrastructure. Electronic Engineering concerns itself more with end products ranging from computers to iPods. What the two STEM professions do share in common are very bright futures.
The field then subdivides into eight primary areas: Power, control, electronics, microelectronics, signal, telecommunications, instrumentation and, probably the fastest growing of the areas, computers. There are many who practice more than one of these sub-disciplines, but it’s possible to specialize in just one of them and make quite a career out of it. There’s also one very popular cross discipline called mechatronics that combines mechanical and electronic engineering.
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What is Material Engineering?
I believe that most of the people out there have not heard of this field, materials engineering. Surely you’ve heard of the traditional fields of engineering such as mechanical, electric, electronic, civil and chemical. So what exactly is this type of engineering all about?
It is not a new field in engineering at all. Historically, the study on materials is not as extensive as it is now. Not to be confused with materials science however, both fields strive to discover more knowledge of the existing materials around us.
Materials science mostly focuses on the basic study of materials, which includes basic mathematical formulae and also the foundation physics of materials. Materials engineering on the other hand concentrates on the development of new materials for industrial and user applications.
Take this basic example to illustrate the focus of this type of engineering. We’ve seen the rise of LCD TVs in the recent years. In the next few years, LED TVs would most probably dominate the market for slim TVs. Previously, the colours which could be emitted by an LED were limited to red and yellow.
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