April 2011

Growth Spurt

Four engineering disciplines have seen their number of graduates more than double from 2000 to 2009.

BY DANIELLE BOYKIN

Over the years, the engineering community has stepped up outreach to encourage more young people to pursue technical careers. That effort may have yielded results, as the number of engineering graduates in the U.S. grew to 74,387 in 2009 from 63,820 in 2000. Engineering students have also been showing a growing preference for degrees in four specialized disciplines. Over the past decade, there have been significant increases in the percentage of bachelor's degrees awarded in biomedical engineering, aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, and petroleum engineering.

Students are being drawn to these disciplines because of higher workforce demands and potential for top salaries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that biomedical engineering employment opportunities should grow by 72% by 2018, while the opportunities for petroleum, nuclear, and aerospace will grow by 18%, 11%, and 10%, respectively. According to Payscale.com's 2010–11 College Salary Report, the top 10 college majors that lead to high salaries include petroleum engineering, aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, and biomedical engineering.

Field of the Future
Biomedical Engineering Society President Richard Waugh believes there is growing recognition that biomedical engineering is an essential field of the future. "What's ultimately driving this is the possibilities of using what's been discovered in the world of biology and making it work in a practical way in health care and health," says Waugh, chairman of the University of Rochester's biomedical engineering department. He also attributes the growing interest to the knowledge gained from the sequencing of the human genome, as well as biological techniques that can be used to create new usable applications and products.

Biomedical engineering programs started to crop up in the 1960s, and the number of ABET-accredited programs grew significantly. According to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), more than 1,150 biomedical engineering bachelor's degrees were awarded in 2000. This number rose to 3,644 in 2009.

The biomedical engineering program at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta is one of the largest producers of students in this field. In 2001, the program's first entering class had 50 students. Currently, there are 1,000 students enrolled as bachelor's degree candidates.

Larry McIntire, chair of the joint Georgia Tech and Emory University biomedical engineering program, believes students are drawn to the program because of their desire to help people. "A lot of students want to do something positive, and with biomedical engineering almost everything that you work on is going to have the potential to be positive in terms of treating humans and human disease," he says.

Ensuring that undergraduate students remain on the engineering career path is a concern of most university faculty members. Georgia Tech retains students by introducing them to hands-on problem-based learning experiences beginning in the freshman year. An introductory three-hour course requires students to work in teams under the guidance of a faculty member. For example, says McIntire, some students have been asked to imagine that they were testifying before a U.S. Congressional committee about the best methods for identifying breast cancer tumors. They were tasked to research the use of ultrasound versus an x-ray method and present their findings and "testimony" to the class.

These students can immediately see how they can put their education to use right away to solve real-life problems. "A lot of the criticism of engineering programs is that students get math, physics, and chemistry in their first year, and they don't see how they are going to use any of that later on," says McIntire. "By solving these major problems, they can see how they are going to have to pull in all of these different disciplines and at the same time, develop team work skills that will help them in their careers."

Taking Flight
A number of seasoned professional engineers within the aerospace industry will attribute their interest in the field to the excitement they experienced while watching the U.S. triumph during the international space race of the 1960s. The numbers show that since 2000, the enthusiasm for pursuing a career in the industry has grown significantly. According to ASEE, the number of graduates receiving aerospace engineering bachelor's degrees increased to 3,057 in 2009 from 1,296 in 2000—a 136% increase.

Mark Sensmeier, P.E., chair of the aerospace and mechanical engineering department at the Arizona campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, attributes the increased interest over the past decade to a combination of workforce needs and interest in NASA. "The industry has an aging workforce, so there's a perception of a lot of opportunities, and there have been over the last decade," he says. "There was a big crunch right after September 11, where the industry contracted a bit, but then there was some catch-up on hiring." Sensmeier also credits the introduction of the NASA Constellation program in 2005 to once again grabbing the attention of young people.

The aerospace industry job market remains promising, but it's a bit tougher now to navigate because some companies have scaled back on projects, and some employees are putting off retirement for a few more years due to the economic downturn. "Most of our graduates are still finding employment or getting into graduate school, but it's certainly tougher than it was before the economic crunch hit," says Sensmeier.

Sensmeier predicts that enrollment growth will slow down in this decade. "We may have hit our plateau because some students that were interested in the space program are becoming leery now because of budget cuts in the program," he says. "That doesn't mean that we will lose students, but they may change their education track."

Navigating the Job Market
Early on, biomedical engineering graduates had some challenges finding jobs because the discipline was fairly new to traditional industries. "There has been this learning process for industry as more departments have been added and more graduates have been coming out," says McIntire. "Companies are finding it attractive that our students have the ability to work in a multidisciplinary environment and have the skills to communicate with both their colleagues and potential customers."

In order to address the unique career needs of biomedical engineering students, Georgia Tech designated a career services director to reach out to medical technology and research companies that will benefit from hiring graduates. "In 2004, zero companies came to our school-wide career fair that were specifically interested in our students," recalls Sally Gerrish, the department's director for student, alumni, and industrial relations. Gerrish soon established a smaller biotechnology career fair for biomedical students.

Gerrish credits the department's growing pool of graduates with the expanded interest in hiring more students and attending the career fair. She hopes that one day the department will no longer need the smaller fair. "More and more biomed companies are coming to the larger fair because our graduates are working for these companies," she says. "We are seeing an increase every year and that's an improvement."

Will the economy affect the job prospects of biomedical engineers? Not that much, says Waugh, who sees a fairly robust future for biomedical engineers because health issues will always be a societal concern. "The pressure to reduce health-care costs is something that a biomedical engineer should be able to affect in a positive way by finding less expensive, more reliable approaches for things that have been done in a traditional way for a long time," he says. "The need for new and better ways to take care of your health will be there."

An Energized Profession
The energy industry, similar to the aerospace industry, has an aging workforce with many retirements expected in the next five to 10 years. Since 2000, the number of students who have graduated with bachelor's degrees from U.S. petroleum and nuclear engineering programs has increased by more than 100%, according to ASEE. While the number of recent graduates in these disciplines isn't as large as the number of aerospace and biomedical engineering graduates, universities are feeling the impact of rising enrollments over the past few years.

Texas A&M University Professor Bryan Maggard has seen a big change in the level of encouragement that students receive to pursue careers in the oil and gas industry. "When I started advising about six years ago, parents who were in the industry would point their students in other career directions," recalls Maggard, assistant department head for undergraduate programs in the petroleum engineering department. "Parents are now steering their students back into the industry, and I think a lot of that has to do with job opportunities." The department awarded 102 bachelor's degrees in 2008–09, up from 43 in 2000–01. The department experienced an 80% increase in student enrollments to 604 during the 2009–10 school year from 335 during the 2005–06 school year.

Maggard attributes successful student retention to efforts to help freshmen decide early on if petroleum engineering is a good fit and through a mandatory internship program. "'Hitting the ground running' is a phrase commonly used internally and externally when it comes to preparing students to enter the workforce," he says. "That's an attribute to our program that is commonly applied because we want to turn out people who can make a difference right away."

Despite the uncertain economy and fluctuating gas prices, the industry is not scaling back on recruiting young professionals because companies learned their lesson from the past and are preparing for the "great crew change," says Maggard. Based on a department student survey, more than 60% of students set to graduate in May reported receiving a job offer by November 2010. "We think we will achieve 90% by graduation and close to 100% shortly thereafter," he says.

One challenge that Maggard's department faces is maintaining the program's integrity while dealing with its growing popularity and industry demands for a larger talent pool. "We manage to stay ahead of the curve because we have an excellent student to faculty ratio, with 20 students to one instructor, and that takes huge resources," he says. "Industry would like to see our [enrollments] get larger, but we are trying to strike a good balance."

In the nuclear industry, talk in recent years of a revival has had a significant effect on nuclear engineering programs. Arthur Motta, chair of Penn State University's nuclear engineering program, believes the rise in enrollments is connected to changing attitudes about nuclear energy. "This industry has lain dormant for some time, but people are now thinking about where our energy is going to come from, and with concerns about global warming, nuclear can provide a contribution to providing clean energy," says Motta. "I also think the image of nuclear energy has gotten better over the years as the industry performance has improved."

Motta says that there were worries about student retention 10 to 15 years ago, but the environment has changed. "Right now there's strong interest in the field, and the quality of students is getting better."

Interest has been so high in the last few years that recruiting initiatives for the Penn State program have slowed down tremendously because Motta wants to maintain the quality of the program. In 1997, there were seven students in the program's junior class, and last year there were 95. "It may not be large numbers when compared to other conventional engineering disciplines, but it's very large numbers for us," says Motta. "We are working on instituting some [enrollment] controls so that we can continue to teach and deliver quality education to our students."

Even before the Japan earthquake began to raise new questions about the future of nuclear power, the weak economy had slowed down efforts to build new reactors in the U.S. While it is too early to assess the impact of the recent events in Japan, Motta believes the job outlook for graduates should still be positive due to rising energy demands, President Obama's support for increased nuclear energy research, and the building of small-scale reactors.

"Clearly, 20% of the U.S. electricity comes from 103 nuclear power plants. Those are going to keep operating for the foreseeable future," he says. "We also have a nuclear industry and vendors that supply an international market, which also creates U.S. jobs. The field is okay even without the new builds."

A Path To Licensure
When aerospace, biomedical, petroleum, and nuclear engineering graduates go into industry, they are generally not required to obtain a PE license due to exemptions from state licensing laws. Both petroleum and nuclear engineering PE exams are available, but an aerospace PE exam was phased out in the 1990s.

As the biomedical engineering discipline grows, many of its practitioners are seriously discussing professional licensure. There are varying opinions about the necessity of licensure and concerns over how to define the body of knowledge to address the diversity of the field says Waugh. "I think we are all recognizing that in a potentially litigious discipline as biomedicine, having that professional engineering stamp of approval could be very attractive for the field in the long-term," he says. "It's not completely uncontroversial, and it's still exploratory, but we are definitely looking at this."

Steven Schreiner, P.E., dean of the College of New Jersey's School of Engineering, is serving as the chairman for the Bioengineering License Consortium. The consortium of five professional societies is discussing and building the rationale for developing professional licensure for the field. "With the support of each of the five societies, we are moving forward with constructing a pathway to the creation of a biomedical engineering exam," he says.

Schreiner says that the consortium has found that with the rise of the number of graduates has come a growing interest in licensure. "The field is at a point where it has differentiated itself from other engineering disciplines in a very real way," he says. "Students are now interested in seeing this happen. They see this as part of being a professional, and many of them are taking the FE exam now."

According to the research conducted by the consortium, FE candidates who identified themselves as having a biological or biomedical degree grew to nearly 500 in 2009–10 from 350 in 2005–06. Since 2005–06, on average more than 100 candidates who self-identified with these degrees have taken the PE exam annually. The consortium recognizes that students are motivated to take the FE and PE exams because it provides an advantage when competing for jobs with other engineers, and it serves as a mark of experience and ability.

The most important rationale that the consortium has for moving forward with developing a path to licensure for biomedical engineering graduates is simple—public health, safety, and welfare. "We feel that nowhere else is it more personal to the public than with biomedical engineering because medical devices and technology are often applied directly to the human person," says Schreiner. "Combining the public health, safety, and welfare rationale with the increasing demand from students, this is clearly the opportune time to investigate creation of an exam."