All I know about consumer sciences is that the background on that page messes with my brain real bad. My eyes do not like it.
CoT is honestly the only thing i can think of that i disagree with Pres Khators decisions
The main reason I can think of to keep it in Tech is that it had courses for other majors, too. I took two HDCS courses, one was product presentations and the other entrepreneurship. Both kind of came at it with tech angles. So youâd need a place for those.
Looking at the coursebook it looks like you could file them under Technology Leadership & Innovation Management, where they put Business Law. Looks like thatâs where most of the business courses were files.
What Iâm curious about is what happens to the foresight/futures studies program? Iâm quite interested in it because if its unique approach to consulting. Itâs a hidden gem at UH. One of the few reputable programs in the field. Will UHCL take it back or does it get absorbed elsewhere?
Yes indeed, pass the two eight hour State of Texas exams for a Professional Engineers License and you are in !
Go Cullen College of Engineering!
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Some companies, I. e. Schlumberger accepted my uncleâs and my Electronics Engineering Technology degree as Engineering.
Dow Chemical does not. I have been titled Process Computer Engineer, manufacturing Cyber Security SME (perhaps better than rank and file Engineer) and am now a Senior ProcessAutomation Software Support Tech⌠It seems to depend on the manager there as to how much respect one is worthy of.
I have been titled Network Engineer at NASA, Database Developer, electronics tech, Customer Service Rep at Nalco (instrument tech), Industrial Cyber Security Consultant in a few places, Technology Manager, and agriculture laborer from 14 years old through 20 or so (intermittent in later years) , Draftsmanâs Assistant, Computer Platforms Tech, and I am sure more. Lawn mower/home lawn maintenance since I could push a Lawn Boy mower.
I have trained Engineers and always said a man who goes from high school and works while anothee goes to get an engineering degree gas âleg upâ for his first 6 to 8 years over a newly graduated Engineer. Of course not in all companies and not in l roles and depending on the individual.
Managers and corporate restrictions may make a bigger difference on any individualâs potential.
Realize that is only my experience and every person will have a different path and opinion.
The issue is public safety . If you engineer anything that affects the public then you must stamp the Drawings as a Professional Engineer (PE). You are certifying that the design is adequate for the intended use. If a failure occurs then the PE,among others, are on the hook.You better have insurance and/or a clause in your employment document that say the company will defend you in court.
Go Coogs !
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No freakinâ way Iâm sitting for that. My brother is a PE in Dallas, and I deal with plenty in my current job. In my opinion, theyâre kind of like accountants. Or morticians. No way in hell Iâm doing it, but I appreciate the people that do, and they earn every penny.
Iâm more of the âmy degree program was/ is in the College of Engineeringâ, as opposed to the âHereâ is my stamp! Iâm mightier than all of you peons! How dare you question me!â kind of engineer.
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Ha you beat me to this. My son and I just visited Purdue and were looking at this. It is basically our âoldâ College of Technology.
We were told that it is actually quite popular among students.
I canât speak for any other CoT degree than mine (BS Construction Management). Even new home builders required a 4 yr degree to become a CM trainee.
This degree was only available at UH and Texas A&M. At A&M it was through the engineering college. They were designed more for commercial construction management but everything had application in new home residential too. Neither UH degree nor A&M degree was designed to train you to be a licensed engineer.
My degree and hard work paid off fast. I Made project manager in Houston in my 4th year and division president over Austin, San Antonio, and Central TX 2 years later. We were among the top 30 builders in the nation by then.
My assistant set up my interviews for new CM trainees each month. Most UT. some from ATM, some from TX State. Engineering degrees flunked early on. As engineers, their life plan didnât include working out doors most of the day every day. They seemed to look at being on the jobsite as a field trip. Where a person graduated from, the degree recieved, really wasnât what decided who made or didnât. It was the personâs mettle to get something completed (a phone call, a foundation, a building).
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Just found the board notes on this merger:
Full write up:
University of Houston
Cullen College of Engineering and College of Technology
Proposed Merger and Renaming
The University of Houston requests approval to merge two colleges: the Cullen College of
Engineering and the College of Technology. The merged college will be named the Cullen
College of Engineering.
Why Merge?
Aligned with the goals of our strategic plan to become a Top 50 public university, the University
of Houston explored the possibility of creating a single college to house our current and future
academic programs in the engineering and technology disciplines. A review of the top 100
universities ranked by U.S. News & World Report revealed that in those institutions with
academic programs in both the Engineering Technologies and Engineering Related Fields, these
programs were housed within a single college commonly named the College of Engineering.
In merging the Cullen College of Engineering and the College of Technology, the University
seeks to create additional opportunities and benefits for students and faculty through leveraging
joint resources, reducing duplication, and increasing alignment with the needs of employers. A
unified âinstitutional brandâ for all UH engineering and technology programs will also make the
University more easily recognizable at the state, national, and international levels. For example,
combining engineering and technology programs in 2021 would have ranked UH the third
largest in the State of Texas surpassed only by Texas A&M University and The University of
Texas at Austin. Total enrollment for all programs impacted by the proposed merger exceeded
9,000 in Fall 2021.
Student Benefits: A merged college is expected to contribute to enrollment growth in both
undergraduate and graduate programs by providing students with a wide array of degree program
options. Synergies gained by the development of multiple completion pathways and the sharing
of common courses will also help enhance retention and graduation rates for programs,
departments, and the merged college. The merger will also allow for the development of new
programs that incorporate both the theoretical and practical views of the discipline. Students will
further benefit through access to combined career resources leading to greater employment
opportunities for graduates.
Consultative Review Process
To explore a potential merger of the Cullen College of Engineering and the College of
Technology, we engaged in a collaborative review process guided by the following principles:
(1) the universityâs commitment toward student success and national competitiveness must be
maintained; (2) the change has to make programs in both colleges stronger; and (3) the process
should be transparent and inclusive.
We began with meetings of upper administration, college deans, and college leadership teams.
Based on the feedback from both colleges, it was determined the question was worthy of further exploration and required wider input. A cross-college task force was then formed and charged
with gathering input from relevant stakeholders and completing a SWOT analysis. At the
conclusion of the analysis, the decision was in favor of a merged entity. With this decision,
multiple town hall meetings were held to seek additional input from the UH community. A
transition committee was then formed to identify implementation considerations related to
governance, faculty and staff advancement, student success, and branding.
Administrative Structure
The merged college will be named the Cullen College of Engineering. The College of
Technology will reside within the Cullen College of Engineering as a Technology Division
which will house the four departments currently in Technology:
⢠Construction Management
⢠Engineering Technology
⢠Human Development and Consumer Sciences
⢠Information and Logistics Technology
The seven departments within the current Cullen College of Engineering (Biomedical
Engineering, Brookshire Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil and Environmental
Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Mechanical
Engineering, and Petroleum Engineering) will not change.
Next Steps
If approved, we will work to ensure a smooth implementation of the proposed merger and
realizing expected benefits. The process of accreditations in the two colleges is largely expected
to remain the same with minor adjustments.
A&SS - E2 College of Engineering and College of Technology Merger 022023.pdf (199.2 KB)
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I was speaking with a friend of mine who is an engineer by training (BS in EE) and who hires a lot of engineers. He says that nowadays, too many universities, especially the âtopâ engineering schools (i.e., Ga Tech, UIUC, Purdue, UT, Rice, Cal Tech, MIT, etc.) waste too much time on theory and not enough on practical application. As such, he has way more luck hiring people with degrees in Engineering Management than Engineering itself. There are exceptions: Civil Engineers are generally better. The worst are Electrical and Computer Engineers. He says all of them seem to be trained to only work for Google, FB, Amazon or other tech companies. No practical application. Meeting deadlines is hard, as these guys are trained to experiment all day and not to deliver results. He now tends to look at âlower ranked schoolsâ who focus on practical applications and hands on field work. One school he mentioned was Worcester Polytechnic Institute (âWPIâ) in Massachusetts. Says that the school does a great job of training students for actual work. Apparently it students spend their entire 4 years working in the field. There are others: Iowa State, NC A&T, NC State, Clemson, LSU, Mercer and Kennesaw State here in Atlanta.
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From my sonâs experience, the top schools offer great application experience through internship opportunities only available to students of those schools.
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Itâs still hard for me to imagine Human Development and Consumer Sciences not being in the business school.
Seems counter-intuitive.
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This is exactly what I hear about the UC Engineers compared to the CSU (Cal Poly & CSU) Engineers. UC Engineers get the fancy jobs though, but CSU have immediately hirable engineers due to their curriculum.
@uhlaw97 I know what youâre saying, especially from HR and retailing: these are business programs. Foresight, which I have a bit of knowledge about, as I have an interest in this field, depends on the schoolâs philosophy. Itâs either
- An offshoot of a public policy school (or think tank) or political science department. The modern field of âFuturologyâ, âFuture Studiesâ or âForesightâ comes from RANDâs Herman Khan. It became an employable skill for planners that work in either public policy or super-massive companies (e.g. O&G). Pierre Wack, a French executive from Shell was handed the keys in the 1970s with the purpose to build a planning group (without any prior knowledge of how to do so). He took the teachings of Khan and assembled it into what most companies use for long-range forecasting and scenario planning.
- A sub-branch of strategy (scenario planning) from the business school. This is what, I understand, is the Wack methodology (and later business strategy theorists) that is taught at schools like NYU and other schools which happen to incorporate strategy into the curiculum.
UH is one of the longest standing, reputable programs in Future Studies, but it originated at UHCL and was then brought over to UH in the '00s. Dr. Andy Hines, a UHCL masters grad, is the head of the program and an awesome guy. Hereâs his video on âForesightâ. The other US one Iâm aware of is the PhD program (via the Poli Sci Dept) at Hawaiâi. Thereâs a lot of applied skill set learned in the UH program as itâs applied for some focus groups:
- Long-range strategy consulting (EY-Parthenon and Kearney or personal firms)
- In-house planners for public policy or large corporations
- Futurists who also like to write fiction (think Neuromancer, despite Gibson hating futurists)
Regarding these âconsumer scienceâ programs, Kansas State lumped them together with their health and human development programs as a separate college. It includes personal finance and family counseling, among other health related programs. Sort of like an offshoot of the old Home Economics programs + UHâs list of Human and Health Performance programs.
TTU, on the other hand, has embraced their consumer science programs into their business school (mainly the personal finance department).
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That reads to me as a lot of cope. Sure, CSU engineers are the immediately-hireable ones. Thatâs why the largest and most successful companies in the world, which pay the best in their industry and have better work-life balance than anywhere else, are packed wall-to-wall with not-CSU grads. Because they havenât caught onto this, but Jimmy from Vacaville or whatever totally has. Seems likely enough.
I think Woodedgeâs point, as confirmed by many of my clients and friends who work in the engineering field, is that those companies in Silicon Valley cannot hire everyone. Yet, the schools all teach as if everyone is going to end up in Silicon Valley (or its offshoots in NoVA, Austin, Chicago, NYC and Boston). That is not reality.
Fact is, one of our problems as a country is that we do not have enough engineers with practical experience. There was an interesting article (I believe it was the New Yorker) about why things costs so much to build in the U.S. as compared to other countries. One of the culprits was engineering costs, likely associated with increased salaries due to shortages of qualified engineers in this field. Of course there were other costs (legal being one!!), but engineering costs were big part.
If I need a bridge and tunnel built, I donât particularly care about your understanding of microchip size vs output.
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I suppose microchip work is far more profitable than B&T work. Even with real estate, it seems like the spoils go to sales and investors.
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At first I thought the decision to move engineering out of central campus was a bad idea.
But I walked the campus a couple of weeks ago after an appointment at the eye institute and my point of view changed.
Over the past 8 months Iâve toured the engineering schools at Columbia, Georgia tech, UTexas, and Johnâs Hopkins.
With the exception of Georgia tech, all the other campuses have spent major money on capital infrastructure. Georgia tech is spending their money on collaboration and Human Resources.
Walking our campus, it seems more feasible to build brand new structures instead of trying to piecemeal our buildings and sandwich new buildings between older ones. UT did this and the aesthetic look is hideous.
So, if thatâs why engineering is being moved, in order to build it bigger and stronger, then itâs a smart move.
That being said, Georgia tech is an example of us not needing a football ops building and still having a good program.
Engineering is staying put.
TECHNOLOGY is now out in Sugar Land.
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