Before we jump into this book, take a minute to reflect. After all, you chose this major for some reason. What do you think an engineer does? Why did you choose this major? Your answer doesn’t need to be a page long, just write a few sentences to reflect.
Engineers have the ability to figure out how to design and build things that make the world a better place. They do this by using their knowledge of math, science, and technology combined with critical thinking and problem-solving skills. To those without this knowledge and skill yet, engineering seems like magic or something else unreachable. However, anyone can be an Engineer and Engineering is for everyone.
Engineers use math, science, and technology as tools to help design solutions to solve problems. Which is why when looking at Engineering courses, you will see a range of math and science classes students take in order to gain these tools. The curriculum is set up to step you from general math and science courses to more advanced courses. Therefore, don’t worry if some of these courses seem out of reach to you right now because each course along the way will give you the skills needed to understand the next more advanced course.
Although what Engineers do is not actually magic, it can be just as astonishing and fascinating. Engineers can create superpowers. To explore what this means, let’s pretend we are in 1918.
Consider, explaining to someone 100 years ago the powers that engineers have given mere mortals. Go ahead, close your eyes, and pretend that you are someone from 100 years ago. You can even come up with an old-timey name for yourself if it helps (my old-timey name is Horatio Winterberry). Go on Wikipedia and try and see what life was like in 1918. That page should allow you to see a bunch of historically important events that happened over 100 years ago. Click through the Wikipedia page, do a little more background research, and get a good feel for the type of technology they had available to them.
Now, continuing our imagination, someone comes from the future and tells you some of the things engineers have created. Engineers have made it so that a businessman can travel to New York from London in a matter of hours! Engineers have created robotic prosthetics that can be controlled from the mind of an amputee! Engineers have developed vaccines so that people are now protected from flu viruses. Horatio Winterberry from 1918 would have thought you are crazy.
For this discussion, we are going to continue role-playing as if we were from 1918. Consider being transported to the year 2018 for a year, long enough to learn about current technology. After a year you are transported back to 1918!
Engineers are in the business of building things that give individual people and humanity as a whole superpowers. Bio-engineers have made crops that can sit super close together so we can grow more food. Biomedical Engineers have developed camera and surgical equipment small enough that surgery now only involves a small cut. Civil Engineers have developed levee systems to protect people from flooding during natural disasters. The list goes on.
Some of the big problems Engineers need to solve today are to help the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To learn more about these goals, check out the website: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From the website, you can click on each goal to learn more about that specific goal. These will be challenges you will likely be working to solve so take the time to explore the website and reflect on which challenge would interest you. Then think about which engineering discipline would be the most useful to help solve that challenge.
