Being a new professional can be a daunting task. You face a new work environment, colleagues, and challenges (professionally as well as personally). Thankfully, many occupations or careers have resources to help with the transition. For instance, my professional organization has a “New Professionals” group that student members become a part of after they graduate. The group provides support in a variety of ways. However, the most leveraged benefit is access to the experiences of the new professionals who already entered the field. They mentor new “new professionals” and really help them navigate their new role.

Coming from a interdisciplinary program, I have been captivated by the notion of transdisciplinarity. I, too, am excited about the forays that VT is making into this vast and unexplored territory.

I have to agree with you that a student is stronger if they have a more diverse perspective. However, it is up to the student to want those skills rather than us forcing it on them. For me particularly, I was forced to take courses outside of engineering in my undergraduate. I chose the easiest ones, and I can tell you I cannot remember anything useful. However, in graduate school I decided that a well-rounded individual is a stronger individual. Therefore, I took this course and other courses to expand my understanding beyond the technical realms and engineering. I have found the experiences to be rewarding.

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I think you wrote a nice reflection. As we transition from student to teacher or new professional, we go from a world of rules and codes of ethics into a new world where these things may not be a clearly defined or enforced. It’s incredibly important that we strive to bring ethics and honor into our new workplace. Integrity is vital for people to respect who you are and the work that you do. It’s something that should become more integrated into our lives, at all levels, during the transition from student to working professional.

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I have to agree with you that there were some course that I have found to be useless. However, some of the courses have taught me skills “that I have forgotten” to be some of the most useful. For example, I was forced to take a lab course where we lost many points for format issues on a technical report. I do not necessary remember exact how to format a report to the specifications of that class, but I have a better understanding of how to write an effective technical report. I developed an eye on how easy is it for someone to look at a figure and understand what is going on. More importantly it has taught me how to apply the skills that I have learned to different applications.

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I also associate with a lot that you write about in this post. I know that when I reached graduate school, I was so excited to take all the classes I WANTED to take as opposed to the classes I HAD to take. I recognize that taking a lot of different introductory classes is helpful in getting students to think in different ways, but it is amazing how much is not applicable or easily forgotten. If you could change the education system as a whole, what would you want to be different in order to reduce this problem?

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I am not quite sure whether that chart is correct. I see a lot of majors missing. Besides, in the more quantitative graduate programs the “Verbal” section is not taken into account by the admission committees, let alone the analytical section. Subsequently, students of such majors have no incentive to perform well.

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I completely agree that ethics needs to be emphasized more. I don’t remember discussing ethics at all throughout undergrad at Virginia Tech aside from maybe one class during intro to engineering course. I took the Ethics class (CEE 5804) that Haoran mentioned and I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in ethics. You don’t have to be in engineering to take the course!

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I agree with the author in that we should see education in connection to societies needs and also take into account the historical perspective. Education is necessary and should adapt to serve the students, and consequentially, society.

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Great post! And I find it very encouraging to see such efforts in regards to bringing the whole self into the classroom made on the part of a future engineering professor. I think your engineering students will most certainly benefit from the environment you are creating for them!