I am a current sophomore studying
Electrical Engineering here at Virginia
Tech. Electrical Engineering is housed
within the ECE department which is the
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department. Electrical Engineering is
essentially the design and creation of
circuits that go into electronics for
controls, communications, robotics, micro
electronics, anything like that. It's very
math heavy and hardware based so you're
going to have a lot of labs, a lot of
team-based projects, but you'll find that
a lot of different engineering
disciplines. So the difference between
computer engineering and electrical
engineering, because they can be very
similar, is that computer engineering is
more focused on the hardware of a
computer or maybe the aspect of
communication with a computer in a
different device, whereas electrical
engineering is more general. So you could
as an electrical engineer be responsible
for designing the electrical system of
the building.
So there's tons of different
applications within Electrical
Engineering. With that, the electrical
engineering department was very recently
restructured to allow students to be
able to move within computer engineering
and electrical engineering, so what that
means is that for incoming students like
you all, in electrical engineering you'll
be able to declare a primary focus under
the electrical engineering department
and that could be in space systems, or
communications, energy and power
electronics, controls, autonomy and
robotics anything like that
and then you also declare a secondary
focus, and your secondary focus can also
be in electrical engineering so maybe
like general engineering or something or
it can be in computer engineering so
that really allows students to get in
kind of both perspectives,
both ends of the spectrum of the
different types of hardware and the
controls and design and approaches that
go into the communication between
different types of devices. The job
outlook for electrical engineers is very
high right now, they're in high
demand, because electrical engineers are
needed everywhere if you go into energy
and power electronics you like everyone
needs power so there's tons of different
opportunities for you, Space Systems you
could go into the automotive industry
may be working on electronic electric
cars anything like that the job outlook
is very high. And then I have an example
here of some of one of the projects that
you could be working on. So as a freshman
you would take a course your spring
semester to introduce you to the basics
of Electrical Engineering. So basic
circuit design and principles for
electrics electricity and then sophomore
year you'll get more into those computer
and electrical engineering classes. So
one of my projects right now is, I'm
working with another student in the ECE
department, and we are responsible for
creating a model smart home. So that
means using an app to turn on different
devices in the house or making things
autonomous so your heater turns on when
your house gets below certain
temperature things like that. So I have
an example of the model house here to
show you and so it's essentially this is
the model house and then you know things
turn on like if the door is open and the
alarm is said you're gonna have an
intruder alert system but electrical
engineering is all of this so that
circuit design and making sure that you
have the correct output based off of the
criteria that you're given from a client
or a professor. If you have any questions
the ECE department is very open to
answering them and if you ever make it
to tech
ECE department is housed in Whittemore
so they have info sessions Monday
through Friday at 2 p.m. So you should
definitely check that out if you make it
to tech and I hope to see you a tech!
