My Major

In today's society, any product, commercial or otherwise, is a result of engineering. The engineers who design these products are divided into specific engineering disciplines, which generally consist of numerous sub disciplines that are found in the workforce. I am particularly interested in Aerospace engineering.

Thomas, Carla "Shuttle Atlantis returning to Kennedy Space Center" 09/01/1998 via NASA Public Domain

1. Aerospace engineering students learn how to apply math and science to solving problems in the aerospace industry. Students must gain a strong foundation in math and science, and practice the design process. Aerospace engineering does not really diverge from other engineering disciplines until the end of the sophomore year. After this point, more focus is placed on the physical properties of flight, and how they affect the design process.

2. The aerospace industry is broad. It encompasses anything that flies, from space shuttles to hot air balloons. A distinction is typically made between the fields of atmospheric flight (aeronautical engineering), and space flight (astronautical engineering). Furthermore it is fairly common for an engineer to work in an area outside of his particular discipline, because all of engineering is so closely related. A wide variety of companies hire aerospace engineers.

3. I was introduced to engineering by one of my middle school teachers. I was interested in it, so I took an engineering course my freshman year of high school. Despite the challenge, I loved the class and ended up completing all four years of the program. I have always been fascinated by space, which led me to research aerospace engineering my junior year of high school, (Junior year engineering students at my high school are supposed to determine which type of engineering fits them best).

4. As far as space exploration goes, NASA is the company that every aerospace engineer wants to work for. While NASA has long been the premier aeronautics and space, many entrepreneurial companies have delved into space exploration, as well as commercialization of the space industry. In the aeronautical industry Boeing dominates the commercial energy, while companies like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin support government and military flight.

5. According to the journal ranking database SCImago, the top journals in the aerospace engineering field are IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Progress in Aerospace Sciences from Elsevier Limited, and the AIAA Journal from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

I read Ayra and Jaynis' posts. Ayra is considering studying psychology, which is a field that I am not very familiar with. After reading her post I realized that many majors aside from engineering also provide a wide variety of career tracks. Jayni is an engineering major, so there are a lot of similarities between our majors. Although aerospace and chemical engineering diverge at about junior year of college, many products require various types of engineers to collaborate on the same projects.