I've recently returned from spending almost 3 weeks in New York City helping out a relative. I did get to do a few interesting things, including going to several of my favorite art museums. At one of the museums I met an unusually friendly, articulate, charming, and seemingly intelligent college student who has a part-time job handing out and collecting the headsets used for audio tours. He wasn't getting much business and when I returned my headset, we got to talking. I asked him what he was studying and he told me that his dream is to be an automotive engineer and to "save the world" by helping to clean up the environment.
I told him that the very best advice I could give him was to take all the mathematics he could because math is crucial to any type of engineering or science. That's when he told me that he was struggling with his college algebra and trigonometry class although he'd managed to pull down an A- the previous semester, when he had a different professor, by working very hard.
I tried to explain a bit to him what might have happened to his prior math instruction (which I think was in NY since he mentioned the Regents exams) and suggested that he sit down and talk about math with some older people (I said "older than his parents") who are good at math. I told him that math isn't all that hard, that he's likely just missing a few key concepts, and that someone who understands math could probably spot his difficulties and set him straight. In the end he gave me his email address so I could send him more
information.
I haven't written to him yet; can anyone think of anything that might help him?
What year of college is he in? What is his current major? Has he gone to his school's college of engineering and asked them about transferring?
ReplyDelete"...his dream is to be an automotive engineer and to "save the world" by helping to clean up the environment."
Automotive engineers don't do that. They design products that make a profit for a company. Don't get me wrong. There may be positions in R&D that work on cutting edge and high efficiency vehicles, but those jobs are few, and you are competing with many other very smart people for those positions. It would help if you specialized in that area as much as you can in college, but you still have to get past the math, science, and engineering courses.
If he is just getting by algebra and trig, then he has a long way to go. Most engineering students start with calculus. A typical (minimal) sequence is Calc 1, Calc 2, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations. Then you have all of the math in the engineering courses that you may have never seen before, like Fourier transforms. These topics can be more difficult because you have to learn what they are, how to use them, and apply them to non-trivial problems while you are learning other material.
I started college as a Physics major and then I discovered engineering. This student should go to his advisor and ask him/her what it would take to transfer to another college/department. If he isn't too far along in his college career then most of his credits can be used, but it sounds like math will be an issue.
If he does not want to commit to a big change to engineering, but keep his options open, then he can look at the engineering catalog and start taking some of their math courses. If there are gaps in his math background, then he should try to find someone (anyone) who can diagnose and fix the problems.
If he really does not like math and just wants to get past the required courses to get to the fun, applied engineering courses, then he has to take a good look at the engineering school course catalog. Look at the syllabi of all of the courses he would have to take. It's not a pretty sight for someone who is just surviving math.
The solution is really very simple. Tell him to go for it. Take more math courses. Even if he never gets to engineering, the courses and effort will do him a lot of good. You never know where it will lead.
Sounds like he hasn't had good guidance in the past. What he should do is take advantage of his current school's career counseling opportunities in order to learn about the fields he is interested in and define his goal vs. his pocketbook and calendar. He should join the student branch of one of the engineering societies and attend local meetings. This site may be of use to him until he can get to the library or find a mentor: http://www.tryengineering.org/become.php
ReplyDeleteMany colleges publish course catalogs on the internet - he should browse and get himself oriented as to the workload of an engineering student. Here's Mizzou's Mechanical Engineering sequence as a starter: http://web.missouri.edu/~umcengrmaeweb/maeflowchart.pdf (Not recommending any particular college, just picking an easy on the eye website and flowchart)
To prepare mathematically, he needs to be ready for calculus. This canadian site has a booklet "preparing for university calculus" that gives an idea of the math he should be comfortable with before trying calculus as well as good tips on handling a college math course: http://cs.smu.ca/apics/calculus/welcome.phphttp://cs.smu.ca/apics/calculus/welcome.php
This site has test prep questions:
http://mathonline.missouri.edu/
Hopefully his current school has a help center that he can take more advantage of, as well as find a group to discuss math with.
Additionally, he should join and actively participate in Toastmasters or some student debating society. Effective communication skills are highly desireable.
HTH;
LGM, an engineer who has had occasion to help high school students figure out how to prepare for engineering school
I hate to say it, but I will.
ReplyDeleteEngineering is hard, very hard.
If he is struggling with Trig and Algebra, he probably wont survive engineering.
Now I know the pc answer is to tell him to seek out help, work hard, etc... but if he goes this route, the odds aren't good.
Every engineering course he takes, will be wasted.
Of course... if he makes it, I guess he can call me a naysayer and tell me "I told you so".
My experience of engineering is from a very different system, so it may not be comparable, but has he encounted calculus yet?
ReplyDelete(We first learnt it in fifth form - age 15 - in NZ).
Anyway, it's not so much a matter of spotting difficulties and setting him straight, it's a matter of being able to do it all automatically.
I think he may be better off looking for whatever is the American equivalent of NZ's Certificate in Engineering (NZCE) which is more applied, less maths (one of my friends at uni who had done the NZCE and was doing the university course with me told me the difference was that in the NZCE course it was "This is the equation you use", at uni you'd derive the equation.
I would expect automotive engineering to be fluid mechanics (including aerodynamics), applied thermodynamics, and some pretty nasty mechanical statics and dynamics. This is nearly all applied mathematics, and much of it is quite difficult.
ReplyDeleteI'd recommend that the student first master the high-school math that he's now taking (trig and algebra are HS math, even if taken in college), then take a serious college calculus course. While taking the calculus course, he should consider that the rest of his college career is likely to consist of four or five simultaneous courses each semester that are almost entirely math that is more difficult than that in the calculus course. It really doesn't get any easier before graduation.
I that thought isn't too daunting, he might have a chance. And he might turn into a good engineer.
Mostly, though, when I'm being realistic, I'm with parentalcation. The road is hard and the odds are long; good luck.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to give such thoughtful and helpful feedback.
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting as I'd originally been expecting something a bit different from ktm. I judged this person as having a lot of potential and thought he was likely just the victim of the
poor math education we've all been reading and writing about and was hoping there was some sort of remedial option. Maybe I was thinking of those anecdotes a month or so ago where one
teacher paid attention to a smart kid and made a huge difference in his life. At the time I'd been reminded of similar experiences that happened to two friends of mine who both ended up as
successful scientists.
However, what you are all reminding me is that what he wants to do is so much harder than where he is now that there's really not a lot of hope.
Now, thinking it over, I reluctantly agree. Someone smart enough to eventually use
differential
equations (not to mention passing beginning calculus) should probably have figured out at least
elementary algebra on his own with even the worst of K-12 teaching.
Steve, I'm pretty sure he's thinking of something like "R&D that work on cutting edge and high efficiency vehicles...." As best as I understood, when he was in high school he though cars were
cool and wanted to design high-performance engines and then somewhere along the way he learned how our current transportation solutions are negatively impacting the environment and is hoping to somehow combine these two interests. Thanks for the advice about the student's needing to be
more proactive about utilizing the resources available to him from his institution.
LGM, thanks for taking the time to point to lots of practical suggestions. I'll be passing these on.
Tracy, thanks for the important reminder that one doesn't have to have an advanced degree to make a positive contribution.
Parentalcation, thanks for the honest "reality check."
And Doug, thanks for following up that reality check with some helpful technical points.