Engineering Degree Requirements

clinic team

To keep the option open for majoring in engineering, a student should have taken Engineering 4 and 79 before the fourth semester. Any proposed variation from this program must be discussed in advance with an engineering advisor.

An engineering major must satisfactorily complete the following required courses for the bachelor's degree:

Engineering Science Stem

The engineering science stem consists of five required courses that collectively embody the fundamental "applied science" knowledge base needed by a broadly educated engineer practicing in the foreseeable future:

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Lape, Spjut

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: The basic elements of thermal and chemical processes, including: state variables, open and closed systems, and mass balance; energy balance, First Law of Thermodynamics for reactive and non-reactive systems; entropy balance, Second Law of Thermodynamics, thermodynamic cycles, and efficiency.

    Prerequisites: CHEM042 HM 

  • Credits: 3

    Instructor: Bassman

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: The fundamentals of modeling continuous media, including: stress, strain and constitutive relations; elements of tensor analysis; basic applications of solid and fluid mechanics (including beam theory, torsion, statically indeterminate problems, and Bernoulli's principle); application of conservation laws to control volumes.

    Prerequisites: ENGR079 HM and PHYS024 HM 

  • Credits: 3

    Instructor: Staff

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: Introduction to the fundamental principles underlying electronic devices and applications of these devices in circuits. Topics include electrical properties of materials; physical electronics (with emphasis on semiconductors and semiconductor devices); passive linear electrical and magnetic circuits; active linear circuits (including elementary transistor amplifiers and the impact of non-ideal characteristics of operational amplifiers on circuit behavior); operating point linearization and load-line analysis; electromagnetic devices such as transformers.

    Prerequisites: ENGR079 HM 

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Brake, Harris

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: This course provides an introduction to elements of digital electronics, followed by an introduction to digital computers. Topics in digital electronics include: Boolean algebra; combinational logic; sequential logic; finite state machines; transistor-level implementations; computer arithmetic; and transmission lines. The computer engineering portion of the course includes computer architecture and micro-architecture: levels of abstraction; assembly-language programming; and memory systems. The digital electronics portion of Engineering 85 may be taken by non-engineering majors as a stand-alone half course under the number ENGR085A HM.

    Prerequisites: CSCI005 HM or CSCI005GR HM or CSCI042 HM 

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Dato, Krauss

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: Introduction to the structure, properties, and processing of materials used in engineering applications. Topics include: material structure (bonding, crystalline and non-crystalline structures, imperfections); equilibrium microstructures; diffusion, nucleation, growth, kinetics, non-equilibrium processing; microstructure, properties and processing of: steel, ceramics, polymers and composites; creep and yield; fracture mechanics; and the selec­tion of materials and appropriate performance indices.

    Prerequisites: CHEM042 HM, MATH019 HM, MATH073 HM, and PHYS024 HM 

A half course in engineering mathematics is also required for the engineering major:

  • Credits: 1.5

    Instructors: Bassman, Lape, Yong (Mathematics)

    Offered: Spring, first half

    Description: Applications of differential equations, linear algebra, and probability to engineering problems in multiple disciplines. Mathematical modeling, dimen­sional analysis, scale, approximation, model validation, Laplace Transforms.

    Prerequisites: MATH019 HM, MATH073 HM, MATH082 HM, and ENGR079 HM 

Systems Stem

The systems stem is a sequence of three required courses that provides analysis and design tools to model and interpret the behavior of general engineering systems. The sequence is multidisciplinary in approach, enabling students to gain a unified view of the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines:

  • Credits: 4

    Instructor: Staff

    Offered: Fall

    Description: An introduction to the concepts of modern engineering, emphasizing modeling, analysis, synthesis, and design. Applications to chemical, mechanical, and electrical systems.

    Prerequisites: PHYS024 HM 

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Cha, Clark, Durón, Yang

    Offered: Fall

    Description: Analysis and design of continuous-time and discrete-time systems using time domain and frequency domain techniques. The first semester focuses on the connections and distinctions between continuous-time and discrete-time signals and systems and their representation in the time and frequency domains. Topics include impulse response, convolution, continuous and discrete Fourier series and transforms, and frequency response. Current applications, including filtering, modulation and sampling, are presented, and simula­tion techniques based on both time and frequency domain representations are introduced. In the second semester additional analysis and design tools based on the Laplace- and z-transforms are developed, and the state space formulation of continuous and discrete-time systems is presented. Concepts covered during both semesters are applied in a comprehensive treatment of feedback control systems including performance criteria, stability, observability, controllability, compensa­tion and pole placement.

    Prerequisites: ENGR072 HM, ENGR079 HM, and ENGR080 HM  

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Cha, Clark, Durón, Yang

    Offered: Spring

    Description: Analysis and design of continuous-time and discrete-time systems using time domain and frequency domain techniques. The first semester focuses on the connections and distinctions between continuous-time and discrete-time signals and systems and their representation in the time and frequency domains. Topics include impulse response, convolution, continuous and discrete Fourier series and transforms, and frequency response. Current applications, including filtering, modulation and sampling, are presented, and simula­tion techniques based on both time and frequency domain representations are introduced. In the second semester additional analysis and design tools based on the Laplace- and z-transforms are developed, and the state space formulation of continuous and discrete-time systems is presented. Concepts covered during both semesters are applied in a comprehensive treatment of feedback control systems including performance criteria, stability, observability, controllability, compensa­tion and pole placement.

    Prerequisites: ENGR101 HM 

Design and Professional Practice Stem

The design and professional practice stem includes five required courses that focus on working in teams on open-ended, externally-driven design projects that, over the course of the curriculum, encompass conceptual design, preliminary (or embodiment) design, and detailed design.

Hands-on exposure to professional practice begins with students undertaking challenging design problems in the first year with an introduction to conceptual design, engineering drawings, and manufacturing techniques:

  • Credits: 4

    Instructors: Mendelson, Santana

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: Design problems are, typically, open-ended and ill-structured. Students work in small teams applying techniques for solving design problems that are, normally, posed by not-for-profit clients. The project work is enhanced with lectures and reading on design theory and methods, and introduction to manufacturing techniques, project management techniques and engineering ethics. Enrollment limited to first-year students and sophomores, or by permission of the instructor.

    Prerequisites: WRIT001 HM 

    Corequisites: PHYS024 HM 

Continues with a laboratory course in experimental engineering:

  • Credits: 3

    Instructor: Staff

    Offered: Spring

    Description: A laboratory course designed to acquaint the student with the basic techniques of instrumentation and measurement in both the laboratory and in engineering field measure­ments. Emphasis on experimental problem solving in real systems.

    Prerequisites: ENGR079 HM 

    Corequisites: ENGR072 HM 

And culminates with three semesters of Engineering Clinic (seniors must submit a final Clinic report that is acceptable to the project's faculty advisor):

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Gokli, staff

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: Participation in engineering projects through the Engineering Clinic. Emphasis is on design of solutions for real problems, involving problem definition, synthesis of concepts, analysis, and evaluation.

    Prerequisites: Junior standing in engineering or permission of Clinic director

    Concurrent requisites: ENGR122 HM 

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Gokli, staff

    Offered: Fall

    Description: Participation in engineering projects through the Engineering Clinic. Emphasis is on design of solutions for real problems, involving problem definition, synthesis of concepts, analysis, and evaluation.

    Prerequisites: ENGR004 HM, ENGR080 HM, and ENGR111 HM or permission of Clinic director

  • Credits: 3

    Instructors: Gokli, staff

    Offered: Spring

    Description: Participation in engineering projects through the Engineering Clinic. Emphasis is on design of solutions for real problems, involving problem definition, synthesis of concepts, analysis, and evaluation.

    Prerequisites: ENGR004 HM, ENGR080 HM, and ENGR112 HM or permission of Clinic director

Engineering Seminar

  • Credit: 0.5

    Instructor: Staff

    Offered: Fall and Spring

    Description: Weekly meetings devoted to discussion of engineering practice. Required of junior engineering majors. No more than 2.0 credits can be earned for departmental seminars/col­loquia. 

    Prerequisites: Juniors only

  • Credit: 0.5

    Instructor: Staff

    Offered: Spring

    Description: Weekly meetings devoted to the discussion of engineering practice. Required of senior engineering majors. No more than 2.0 credits can be earned for departmental seminars/col­loquia. 

    Prerequisites: Seniors only

Three Upper Division Electives

  • Three upper division engineering technical electives (numbered higher than 100, others by petition. Not to include courses listed above. CSCI070 HM is also accepted as an engineering technical elective). 

Students should note that many electives are offered in alternate years.