March 2014

Letters

A Question of Experience
I found the article “A Matter of Timing” in the December 2013 issue (p. 20) quite interesting, but it seemed to overlook what I’ve always considered to be the obvious reason for the four-year experience requirement before taking the PE exam: to develop engineers who are well-rounded and more knowledgeable regarding the overall principles and practices of engineering.

The four-year wait provides the engineer the opportunity to spend time learning how things are done in actual engineering practice and start to focus on a specialty area. Then, just as some of the academic details of college start to become rusty, the engineer is forced to review many of the basic engineering principles and apply them again, this time with the insight provided through four years of experience.

Ron Hindman, P.E.
Allison Park, PA

The author’s main arguments for early taking are: early test-taking will boost the numbers of licensed PEs, women will be able to pass the PE before starting a family, there is no statistical difference in the pass rates, and it will increase the overall image of the profession.

Two of the points actually contradict each other. If there is no statistical difference between taking it early and taking it after four years of experience, how will this rule change increase the number of licensed PEs?

I would recommend we not decouple the four-year experience requirement for the PE exam. Today we are barely holding on to 128 hours of education to earn a baccalaureate degree in engineering. Who would have thought that would happen? Thirty years from now, with decoupling, who will remember why any experience is required to become a licensed professional engineer?

David Peterson, P.E.
Raleigh, NC

I took the Colorado FE exam as a school requirement for graduation. I took the PE exam a week later, as an option. While I made the school’s third highest score that year on the FE exam, I passed the PE by the skin of my teeth because it concentrated on construction and building design, while I was an instrumentation guy. If there had not been a question on orbital dynamics, I might have flunked it.

While serving as a junior officer after graduation, I had the great fortune to work under a licensed PE, Major Billy Webster, who encouraged me to become licensed and signed my Colorado application with the required years of experience. So I have been licensed in Colorado since 1975, and more recently in Arizona and New Mexico by comity.

Gary L. Hoe, P.E.
Albuquerque, NM

NSPE has advocated for the flexibility to allow individuals to take the PE exam early, but there is a gap on the inverse. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, require all qualifying experience to take place after an EIT was issued. Others, such as California, accept legal qualifying experience prior to the EIT as long as it follows graduation with an engineering degree. The punch line is that my work on the test team for the Phoenix Mars lander won’t be accepted by Pennsylvania, because it happened before my EIT.

How do we strive towards increasing the percentage of PEs, particularly in areas that generally don’t have many, like aerospace, without lowering the bar, and while avoiding absurd situations like mine?

Mike Delaney, P.E.
Lancaster, CA