An Electrical Engineering Journey

Today, electrical engineers play an integral role in our society. They are vital towards modern development of technology, software, and infrastructure. Although in the past, electrical engineers were commonly associated with electricians, today's engineers possess a much broader range of skills. Most schools offering a degree in electrical engineering require their students to become well versed with many subjects, including computer science, physics, and math.

Undergraduates planning to pursue a degree in electrical engineering should expect to take core classes in the subjects of math and physics, with a focus on circuits, electricity, and magnetism. In their later years, electrical engineering students will elect a subject for their major in the discipline. Major electives can include computer hardware engineering, power plant engineering, and computer engineering.

Power engineers deal with the generation and transmission of electricity. They sometimes work with power plants, and work extensively with the automobile industry. Routing power from an engine to attached peripheral devices is one of their main responsibilities. On the other hand, engineers with a focus in microelectronics typically work in the computer industry. These engineers focus on the production and design of very small circuits used in computers and other electronic devices. Telecommunication engineers work with data transmission. They work mainly on designing computer cables, telephone cables, and fiber optics. Many of them work on the production of receivers and transceivers, which send and receive signals. The design of these devices is very important, as a faulty design can result in too much signal noise.

In today's workforce, electrical engineers are employed in a multitude of areas. They are responsible for maintaining the power grids world wide, and for supervising research and development of electronic devices and technology. Electrical engineers and physicists also invented the GPS (global positioning system), and to this day, they assist in creating new devices for use with the old system.

Many people underestimate the job of electrical engineers, for they believe that these engineers deal only with circuits and wires. Most electrical engineers (and engineers in general) will have a basic knowledge of circuit theory. However, a large number of electrical engineers may not ever use their knowledge of circuits in a job. Jobs for EE majors vary from a consultant at a business firm, worker on the machinery at a quarry, to a designer in lab of a fabrication plant. Some engineers are even hired at finance and business consulting firms. These types of firms look for graduates in engineering due to the basic skills of reasoning and logic that are required during engineering majors.