Gannon offers the only Mechanical Engineering Master’s Degree in the region. What you might not know is that Gannon also offers five other branches of engineering for students: biomedical, electrical and computer, environmental, industrial and software.
Biomedical Engineering:
The Biomedical Engineering program expands on traditional engineering expertise to analyze and solve problems in biology and medicine to provide an overall enhancement of health care. Biomedical engineers are most similar to mechanical engineers because they deal with “how things work,” but in regards to the human body.
Electrical and Computer Engineering:
The electrical and computer engineering department offers two technical options: electrical and electronic/computer engineering. Both are designed to guide students to build technical competency, effective communication and leadership skills. This is the most technical type of engineering that enables a student to develop both hardware and software for computers. Computer engineers are the ones you have to thank for building your computer.
Environmental Engineering:
Environmental engineering implements the skills that science and math provide to solve environmental quality problems. Our students learn how to make water safe to drink and safe to release back into the environment. Students also learn about how humans and the environment are adversely affected by human activities and natural processes that generate pollution or have some other detrimental effect. The environmental engineers learn to make the world more environmentally friendly.
Industrial engineering:
Gannon University’s Industrial Engineering (IE) program focuses on three major areas:
- Work design and ergonomics
- Quality control and statistics
- System optimization and simulation
This program is the most recent addition to Gannon’s Engineering Department and it will teach students to become leaders in IE as they learn key components of the field such as designing efficient and safe working environments. Industrial engineers also learn to use people, machines, materials, information and energy to efficiently and profitably make a product or provide a service. The students in this program work a lot with bringing groups together and operations management.
Mechanical engineering:
Mechanical engineering is the second-largest, broadest and one of the oldest engineering disciplines. Students in the mechanical engineering program need to be creative and inquisitive, yet analytical and detail oriented. The program is a great fit for anyone interested in researching, designing and developing new mechanical systems. Seniors have the opportunity to specialize in energy, fluid or thermal systems or mechanics, structures and machine design. Mechanical engineers deal mostly with the general idea of how things work.
Software engineering:
For students interested in balancing business needs, technology and human factors in order to yield a successful product, the software engineering (SE) program can help prepare students for an inventive career in the specification, design and development of high-quality software systems. Starting with a foundation in problem-solving and programming, the software engineering program is prepared to educate students in an interdisciplinary academic environment and enhance their communication, teamwork and interpersonal skills. Software engineering majors learn how to apply the principles of computer science, engineering and analysis to the design, creation, testing and evaluation of software systems.
These six engineering disciplines offer a wide variety of appeal to all different angles of engineering. Most students on campus may assume that only males prefer to be in the engineering department; however, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the few female engineering majors on campus. She was able to clear up the difference between all the disciplines and help me to better understand her take on being a female in the engineering world. Samantha Brueckner, Junior Mechanical Engineering Major also answered a few other questions for me.
Q: How do you feel as a woman in the engineering field?
A: It’s definitely weird being such a strong minority in my major. In the majority of my classes I am the only female. However, it makes me stand out to my professors and future employers, simply because I am different.
Q: What do you wish students on campus knew about the engineering department at Gannon?
A: I wish that people knew how advanced the engineering programs are at Gannon. As health science majors seem to be the biggest pull for Gannon, engineering kind of gets thrown to the side. For being such a small department, engineering at Gannon provides a great education and sets a student up perfectly to start his or her career right after graduation.
0 Comments