Category: Graduate Students

The last couple of weeks I have written about entrepreneurship, management, and leadership in engineering and engineering education. I have a few more thoughts about this topic, and next week I’ll move on to something else.

Last week I said that I support education in entrepreneurship and innovation for ECE students, but that I don’t have much to offer in that arena so I’ll have to leave it up to someone else. I also made the case for an education that emphasizes engineering fundamentals first, and the other more human-centered activity later. I stand by those remarks, although I will admit there is plenty of room for debate. This past weekend I heard a lot of that debate at the annual meeting of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association, or ECEDHA (yes, there really is such a group.) A lot of universities and engineering schools are introducing entrepreneurship into the curriculum, so Michigan Tech is not alone in this venture and we can probably learn a lot from our peers.

My first point will be to encourage 5-year programs for students that really want to do it all. The standard undergraduate engineering program is four years, and at Michigan Tech that means 128 student credit hours – 32 per year, 16 per semester. The pressure is on to cram as much stuff as we possibly can in those 128 credit hours. We certainly contribute to that problem by our insistence on rigorous EE and CpE programs that have a lot of courses required by name and number. I still maintain this is the right approach, since the best time to learn that material is when one are 18 to 22 years old, and we have a whole lifetime to keep learning about relationships with other people, how organizations work, and how to turn ideas into money. For those students that want to combine engineering with business, then I think the best approach is to admit that four years is just not enough, and the investment of another year of early adult life in education may be called for. This creates some breathing room, and also an opening to pursue an additional degree. This degree could be a second undergraduate degree such as a BS in Engineering Management, or an advanced technical degree such as our MS in Electrical Engineering or MS in Computer Engineering. At Michigan Tech we have recently introduced the “accelerated” MS program, where students can double-count 6 credits toward both a BS and an MS degree, thereby getting both the BS and MS in 152 total credits instead of 158 (128+30). Not that many students are taking advantage of this opportunity to date, but that is mostly the result of our not doing enough to promote the program. That is certainly on my to-do list.

For students who want to go “all in” for engineering management and leadership, I strongly recommend a rigorous undergraduate engineering education first, working a few years as an engineer in a reputable organization, and then returning to school either full-time or part-time to earn an MBA. The Engineering + MBA combination is a very hot ticket and students who can get all the way through both sides will find themselves very well positioned for a lucrative career. What I don’t really recommend is a stand-alone undergraduate program in engineering management. Michigan Tech has one of these programs, and so I’m probably going to get in trouble for writing these words. I’m just not a big fan. I believe that the first step toward engineering management is engineering, which means knowing what the field is and actually having work experience in it. I will bolster this argument by pointing out that undergraduate engineering majors are very well-represented among Fortune 500 CEOs; see Insead Knowledge blog. Again, this is one of these areas where there is room for debate, so if any of my colleagues want to take issue with my remarks I will be happy to give them room in this column to do so.

Finally, let me mention the hot-button issue of General Education, or “Gen Ed” as it is often called. This refers to the set of courses that are included in the curriculum to ensure a well-rounded education of all the students. In many institutions the Gen Ed program refers to the requirements that are common to all students, and this is the case at Michigan Tech. Now I am all for a well-rounded education, and believe that all students should have a meaningful learning experience in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This helps to promote good critical thinking and communication skills. Like a lot of electrical engineers, I am an amateur musician and that has made a huge difference for me personally in giving me a broad outlook on life, not to mention expanding my circle of friends. Where I have problems with Gen Ed programs is that those in charge of setting requirements often give short shrift to business-related courses, which really can be a part of a broad education and at the same time create some room in the 4-year engineering programs for those with interests in business, economics, and accounting. So, I will continue pushing for a “broader” interpretation of what Gen Ed means, and hopefully our ECE students will benefit in the long term.

Have a great weekend. I’ll be back next week with some thoughts stirred up by the recent ECEDHA meeting.

– Dan

Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University

Last week I wrote about my trip to the San Francisco and Bay Area and the culture of high-tech innovation that is flourishing there. Today I will follow up with a few random thoughts about entrepreneurship and the role that universities play in this world.

There is no doubt that entrepreneurship and start-up companies are huge in Silicon Valley. There is a whole eco-system of universities (most notably Stanford), venture capital, incubators, and a wealth of engineering talent to keep the Valley humming. Everybody and his brother has some venture going, in fact you’re nobody if you’re not trying to create some new business. It’s as if, in southern California, everyone is out trying to hawk their amazing screenplay, and in northern California, everyone has an idea for an Internet start-up that they will pitch to anyone who will listen.  Everyone is aware of the meteoric rise of Apple, Google, and Facebook – Steve Jobs has become a cultural icon – and the prevailing sentiment is, there is no good reason that I can’t do the same thing and become a bazillionaire with my fantastic disruptive technology.

This is sort of an aside, but this whole culture of entrepreneurship is brilliantly depicted in the hilarious HBO series “Silicon Valley”, about to go into its third season. The show follows a group of engineering misfits (aren’t we all) with a great algorithm for  video coding, all living and working under one roof, as they navigate the choppy waters of venture capitalists, big-time competitors, trade shows, and misguided management. I highly recommend it, although it is HBO so be prepared for the usual cable standards of adult language and themes. I have had a number of good conversations in California about the show, and everyone has an opinion. Many will say “it’s nothing like that!” but just as many will nod knowingly and say “it’s exactly like that.”

But back to matters at hand. The culture of entrepreneurship which has taken California by storm and has become part of the national conversation, is having a big impact on engineering programs, especially in electrical engineering and computer science. It is  now clear that starting a company is now one of the options available to young engineers, right alongside getting a job at an established company or going to graduate school. The question is, what can we do, and what should we do, as educators to prepare students for this brave new world?

Michigan Tech is addressing this question head-on. We have established a Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, precisely to help students learn about project management, innovation, entrepreneurship, and business practices in the high-tech environment. Students from all different disciplines have the opportunity to participate in the Center, and indeed it played a role in the “Silicon Valley Experience” that I described last week. The Center is getting a lot of attention from philanthropically-minded alumni, and rightly so. I expect it to be a big success, and a big draw for new students coming to Michigan Tech.

That being said, my personal answer to what we should be doing for our students is a little bit different. I have to admit, straight up, that I do not know that world very well (OK, at all) and therefore I really can’t be of much help. I fully support my colleagues and our good friends who want to support this activity, but for the most part they are going to have to do it without me. Maybe someday I’ll have a great idea and try to start a business, but it hasn’t happened yet, and I shouldn’t be telling students how to do it until I do. (That’s not entirely true – for a while I owned a business in Missouri called “Tropical Entertainment” that was the business front for a salsa band that I played in. But that’s a story for another column.) My skills are much better put to use helping students learn the fundamentals of electrical engineering, and supporting my faculty so that we can be the best ECE Department that we know how to being terms of education and research.

The other point I have to make about going “all in” with entrepreneurship is that, as exciting as it sounds, only a small fraction of our students are ever going to give it a shot. The vast majority of our students are going to work for an established company as an engineer, and they are going to be very good at it.  The 300+ companies that come to campus to hire our students are well aware of this.  Taking this a step further, I’m not going to throw all those corporate recruiters under the bus by telling them that our main goal is to train students to start their own businesses. People study engineering for all sorts of reasons. Our mission should be to prepare students in electrical and computer engineering, so that they can go out into the world, practice their trade, and make a decent living. What they do after that is up to them. Starting a business is one of the options, to be sure, but the truth is that most of them will practice their engineering by working for someone else, and that’s perfectly OK with me.

My last point today has to do with the issue of when is the best time to get into the entrepreneurial game. As I stated above, I am supportive of my colleagues who want to bring that down into undergraduate educational programs. Where I draw the line, however, is in substituting business and entrepreneurship for hard-core engineering at the undergraduate level. There is a time and a place for everything, and let’s face it, the best time to learn science, math, and engineering is when you are young. Young brains are just ready for it. Those same brains may not be fully developed for mature social interactions, but that’s OK, there is time enough for that later.  Business, management, leadership, entrepreneurship – these are domains that require knowledge of working with people as well as working with things, and for many that knowledge comes with a few extra years. My advice to students is, before you get stars in your eyes, LEARN ENGINEERING FIRST. It will serve you well later, no matter what you do. As a case in point, I look at all of our very – and I mean very – successful ECE alumni who have had fabulous careers as business leaders and entrepreneurships, and are promoting entrepreneurship on our campus so heavily. Ask them what they were doing when they were 22 years old, and the answer is uniformly the same – they were working as engineers.

Am I the only one who sees the irony in this situation?  Engineering education and engineering practice at a young age is the best launch pad for anything our ambitious students want to accomplish in life.

So again, I fully support my colleagues who seek to bring exposure to entrepreneurship into our undergraduate curriculum; I think it’s great and very forward-looking. For my part, I’m going to keep doing what I do best – building educational programs for students that I fully expect to be among the very best electrical and computer engineers in the country.

– Dan

Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University