Senior Design: Managing Student Expectations of the Real World

By Jay R. Goldberg

NOTE: This is an abstract of the entire article, which appeared in the September/October 2011 issue of the IEEE Pulse magazine.
Click here to read the entire article.

As senior capstone design instructors, our job is to help prepare our students for careers in biomedical engineering. Since the majority of them will someday work for a medical device company, our focus on design is particularly important and relevant. Capstone design courses and biomedical engineering curricula help students develop technical, interpersonal, and communication skills and provide them with the broad knowledge base they will need for successful careers as biomedical engineers. Additionally, accreditation requires programs to meet several learning criteria to ensure that the students will be prepared for careers in biomedical engineering after graduation.

There are many mechanisms in place that prepare our students to solve open- ended problems, think critically, and work well in teams. However, there are fewer mechanisms in place to let students know what to expect in their first job, what their early careers might be like, and how they are expected to behave and function in an organization.

When I began my career in the medical device industry in 1980, there were things that I did not learn as an undergraduate or graduate student that I would have liked to have known before starting my career. These are things that are typically learned on the job and may be a rude awakening to new engineers with certain expectations. Students without cooperative or internship experience should be aware of a few of these realities of industry before they begin their careers.

(In the complete article the author expands on the following realities that students should be prepared for)

Project Assignments

In many companies, engineers do not get to choose the projects they work on. This can be a rude awakening to many new engineers.

Types of Projects

Not all projects to which engineers are assigned will involve exciting, novel, state- of-the-art technologies. This can be disappointing to new graduates who expect to work on the newest, coolest technologies immediately after starting a new job.

Skills for Career Advancement

Students should understand that successful careers in engineering require not just technical skills but excellent interpersonal, communication, and team skills. In many companies, an engineer’s project management skills and his/her ability to get products out the door is the key to early career advancement.

Importance of the Customer and Meeting Customer Needs

Engineers working in industry must understand that successful businesses create products that meet customer needs. Innovation involves meeting needs in a new and better way.

Identifying New Product Opportunities

Most companies maintain a pipeline of potential new projects from which to choose when deciding which new projects to fund. Sometimes the pipeline is empty, and engineering personnel work with marketing, sales, and other personnel to identify new product opportunities.

Working on Truly Multidisciplinary Teams

Most capstone design students learn to work on multidisciplinary teams. Often these teams consist of engineering students of the same discipline. Some teams include students from other engineering or technical disciplines. Other teams may include business and other nontechnical students.

(After exploring these realities, the author concludes as follows.)

People with industrial experience should think about the things that they wished someone had warned them about or made them aware of. If you are a faculty member, I urge you to share your industry insights and perspectives with your students to better prepare them for their first industry experience. Based on my personal experience, I feel that if they have reasonable expectations, their early career experiences may be more positive. If you have some insights or other realities not listed here that you would like to share with students, please share them with me at jay.goldberg@mu.edu.