Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1510765
24 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2023 Additionally, what's really cool is that because I have teams that consist of both senior grad- uating engineers and first semester engineers, there's some mentorship. I have a corporate culture. In my program, admittedly, every year half of my "employees" quit by graduating. As we discussed earlier, much of this is being addressed in this context. Maybe not per- fectly, meaning we're constantly looking to improve, but we do things that make our stu- dent engineers question where they're going, what they're doing in terms of the design, and how the math and physics they're learning play into designing things to improve the world and improve the human condition. So, you're a professional school operating on community college campuses. Pre-engineer- ing students apply and are accepted into that program from multiple locations. Is TCE a preferred program, or do students approach it as a Plan B when they don't make the cut at their university? We're seeing both. Once people find us and see what we do, they prefer us in many cases. We see a lot of our student engineers coming from a spectrum of society. We have a lot of non-tra- ditional students, especially veterans. Along with our traditional students, we serve them all in very well in different ways. It's interest- ing to see the interactions between the differ- ent groups in our student body. We accept a lot of people into our program who maybe started off thinking about other locations, then found us, and saw what we were about in the way we prepare engineers. We learn engineering by doing engineering. You'll hear me use the term "student engi- neers." If you go to most schools, they will talk about their engineering students, not their student engineers. ink about the difference in that language. It's a very different level of power, dynamic, and expectation. I expect my student engineers to step up and make stuff. I expect them to do things. I don't expect them to solve a lot of book problems all the time. e faster I can get them applying that knowl- edge in a meaningful context, the better off we all are. How long has the TCE program been running, and how well is this program preparing student engineers for the real world? What are your findings there? I've had student graduates for about 10 years. We find they have been uniquely prepared. I like to talk about the "first email." Have you ever received one of those? It's three para- graphs and clearly took them four hours to write when it should have been two sentences in 10 seconds. My engineers get past that "first email," and even more, they get that first pre- sentation and first weekly report. ere's a huge cultural shi. In our program, I wouldn't say that our stu- dents come out knowing exactly what indus- try is like. But they're 80% of the way there. In fact, we have two different scales for grading. One scale that applies to our first semester stu- dents and another scale that applies to every- body else. Well, you might say, that's not fair. Rob Sleezer