Tufts Blogs

Watt is engineering, you ask? Great question—I once had the same one! When I applied to college, I was drawn to engineering because I knew I loved math and science, but I was apprehensive because I didn’t really know what engineers did or what the field encompassed. Now that I have been studying engineering for two years here at Tufts, I feel like I am in a position to help someone else gain a little insight into the world of college-level engineering.

Aside from taking advantage of a platform to make engineering puns, this series will attempt to shine a light on what studying engineering at Tufts really entails. This first post will briefly explain the nine main engineering majors offered here, so please use it as a launchpad for finding the field of engineering that is most interesting to you!

---

 

Civil Engineering

CivE’s construct the built environments in which we live our lives. In this way, the product of civil engineers’ work can often be appreciated on a large scale as a highway, airport, stadium, or canal. However, there are also less visible products of civil engineering that impact our daily lives, such as water infrastructure in cities and sustainable concrete in buildings. As a CivE, you could choose to focus on a technical side of architecture or on the science of soil behavior!

 
Environmental Engineering

EnvE’s use their skills to solve environmental problems. Examples of environmental engineering projects include designing water purification systems to bring clean water to rural areas and remediating sites that have been contaminated by chemical spills or human activity. Public health, clean energy, water treatment, and problem solving all converge in this field. Environmental engineering is a little chemistry-heavy, whereas civil engineering veers more toward physics, but ultimately the two both focus on systems that directly impact humans and the world in which we live.

Mechanical Engineering

In one word, ME is tangible. In more than one word, MechE’s figure out how things work; things meaning machines and devices. This major involves a lot of working with your hands, constructing and deconstructing. Anything from parts of a car to a dishwasher to gears on a bike are designed, built, and improved by engineers in this field, so no industry is beyond the scope of mechanical engineering! If you find gadgets engaging and physics fun, you might find that this major really grinds your gears (but in a good way).

 

Human Factors Engineering

Human Factors focuses on designing devices and is housed in the Mechanical Engineering Department but is not an officially ABET-accredited engineering degree like the others mentioned in this post. This just means that the major isn’t nationally standardized across American universities, partially because it is such an innovative field and because Tufts is one of only a few universities that offers it as an undergraduate major! Without the structure of ABET, Human Factors Engineers have a bit more flexibility in the classes they take and focuses they choose, whether in computer science, graphic design, product design, or something else entirely!

Chemical Engineering

Chemical Engineering can be applied to a wide range of industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to technology devices to environmental remediation. This major is challenging and rewarding because it goes into such depth to teach the intricacies of chemistry and its applications. One of my best friends is a ChemE, and she loves the sub-microscopic mindset because she seriously thinks molecules are just the cutest things…

 

Biomedical Engineering

BME improves our present lives and paves the way for future innovations. Tufts researchers are pioneers in the field of tissue engineering, where projects include exploring the use of silk as a biomaterial and creating tiny bioelectronic devices that dissolve after functioning for a period of time. Design and research are key parts of this major, whether you find yourself in a lab for a class or because you reached out to a professor whose work you find most interesting!

Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering

In addition to making circuit puns (i.e. the title of this series), there are many reasons you might be interested in studying in the ECE Department! Electrical and computer engineers work on the hardware of technology devices, whereas computer science engineers develop the software. My friend described two tracks within electrical: one can choose to concentrate on analog EE (more physics-driven, centered on wires and waves) or digital EE (more data-focused, generally about binary and computer logic). The digital track is closely aligned with the computer engineering major, so there is lots of overlap within the department!

 

Computer Science Engineering

While electrical and computer engineers focus on hardware, the CSE major involves coding and focuses on the software side of computers. CompSci is one of the most popular majors at Tufts and it is such a quickly growing field that its opportunities are endless! Fun events like hackathons (i.e. Tufts Polyhack) bring the CS community together to solve problems, create apps, and just code with other people for hours on end.

There are many other majors and minors to explore in the engineering school here at Tufts, such as Architectural Engineering and Music Engineering, but if I tried to touch on all of the different programs out there I think you’d be graduated by the time I finished… If you want to know more about a specific field, I encourage you to give the major a Goog' (Google) and find out more!

If you're curious to learn more, stay tuned for the next blog in this series that will discuss the pro's and con's of these engineering programs...