What degree should I take on?
 

Well guys, looks like I am going back to school in order to add a couple of more letters to the end of my name and to add some credibility to the practical and applied knowledge I have gained over the last 20 years.

I want to make this hobby a career and would love to keep it in the transportation industry.

Now I know its Engineering, but which field of engineering would be best to tackle the challenges of alternative fuel and / or the transportation industry.

Thanks for the help.

Mechanical! I could get you in at the Thayer School up in NH, *winkwink*

I was leaning that way .. however relocation is not an option. I have to stay in S. fla, so it looks like FAU is the place for me to be ...

Alrighty then Mechanical so far ... anyone else agree or disagree

Any engineering degree will work. You've got two years to decide after you start.

What do you want out of your degree?

A lot of it is how you focus the degree. I just finish my mech e degree and I am not fit to change my own oil yet. With that said, I know enough to be doing design work for NASA. Mechanical engineering is way to big to just do that.

I think Mechanical Engineering is a whole lot cooler because it is a much broader field of study: Materials Science, Mechanics & Dynamics, Mechanics of Materials, Fluid Dynamics, Control Systems plus maybe more depending on your school. Mech Eng types have a better understanding of the word because they are a jack of all trades. That said, the future of the world is in electronics and 95+% of M.E.s are pretty clueless on that subject.

To me the ultimate would be a 2 year technology in electonics and a M.E. degree on top of that. Since nobody would commit the time to that, do the E.E.

By the way, I have a degree in M.E.

Mechanical and see if you could pull a double and get one in Electrical as well.

Most modern mech programs require a good deal of electronics. I took two circuits classes, an electric machinery course (transformers, motors, etc), two programming courses (one higher level and one asm on a pic) and these were the bare minimums. The old guys may not know it but the new ones are going through programs stressing inter-disciplinary skills and that requires a strong EE background. Of course, your mileage may vary with those lesser known institutions.

I graduated in 2001 and I had DC and Fortran programming in 1rst year, AC in Second year, a EE elective in 3rd year of either basic electronics or Power systems and two classes in Controls in 4rth and I took an elective in programming a microcontroller that year as well. The 3rd year electives only teach you very simple analysis, the controls was 100% theoretical and the microcontroller class was way too short. From my year at least, we were left with a minimal understanding, completely short of designing anything and god help you if you had to build something. I liken it to asking a EE to talk about materials/manufacturing or dynamics of mechanical systems or heat transfer, they know what each are but don’t have a deep enough background to competently do anything with them on a mechanical system with any degree of complexity.

I will agree that new M.E. programs are trying to focus more on the inter-disciplinary stuff, but doesn’t that cheapen your abilities WRT what you could know about mech systems?

Go w/ whatever suits ya and add in some courses from other engineering programs such as signals and systems if you're ME, etc... Also, if you can stand it, getting a double w/ some engineering major and pure math would look muy bien. And it's not like it's hard either, there was someone w/ a MS in EE and another guy w/ a PHd in ChE in my undergrad analysis classes.