Officially Lucky ❡ a blog by Clint Ecker

“In electrical engineering, the students are not connected to the physical world any more. They are not ham radio operators; they have not taken apart their cars. As a result, there’s a rather tenuous connection between the nice mathematical concepts and the practical applications in the real world,” said Gerald Sussman, the Matsushita Professor of Electrical Engineering. “On the other hand, they’re more sophisticated in some ways. They come in knowing how to program. So instead of teaching them to program, we teach them to solder.”

Hal Abelson, the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, agreed. “The students come in without hands-on experience, which makes the curriculum harder and less real,” he said.

Hands on approach, eh? This has been around for years at Purdue in the Technology department. Having been in the program for 2 years now, I would recommend it for anyone that wants a hands on approach in addition to the math side. We use Laplace transforms, Forier, diff. eq., and systems just like everyone else. But for most of the classes we also spend 3 hours a week in lab (per class) building what we learned (for example, a class H and class D amplifies, AM transmitter, H-bridge motor controllers, programing micro-controllers, etc.) I know people in EE that wouldn’t know where to begin in practical circuit design. But thats because they havn’t (and most likely won’t) be taught it. And that is exactly the problem with most engineering programs these days.