Whatever their field of engineering, engineers are concerned with applying scientific knowledge and social skills. To apply scientific knowledge engineers must have a strong basis in science; but they must also work in a real world of economic forces and social priorities. Engineering is creative work based on science applied with art and skill, with social and economic dimensions added.
Engineers, like other professionals, are morally and legally responsible for using their skill and judgment for the public good, and it is the task of engineering faculties such as Monash to educate and train engineers so that they can accept these responsibilities. When engineering students graduate they are required by the profession to work for a period of three years or more under the direction of qualified engineers. Only then can they too be recognised as fully qualified professional engineers and, if they wish, practise in their own name as consulting engineers, or participate responsibly in engineering works as members of government or industrial organisations.
The Faculty of Engineering is spread over three campuses of Monash University. At the Clayton school, students may choose from courses in six major branches of engineering. They are chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical and computer systems engineering, materials engineering, mechanical engineering and environmental engineering.
At the Caulfield school, students may choose from programs in civil engineering and computing, electrical engineering and computing, industrial engineering and computing, mechanical engineering and computing.
Each course emphasises the use of computers in engineering design.
At the Gippsland school, students may choose from programs in civil engineering, electronic and computer engineering, electro-mechanical engineering, mechanical engineering and mining engineering.
Within these groupings an engineer may make a career within a wide range of engineering specialisations; a chemical engineer may specialise in chemical plant design, or mineral processing, or environmental protection; a civil engineer may specialise in construction and management, or hydrology, or structural design; an electrical engineer in computer systems, or telecommunications, or electrical power; a materials engineer in metallurgy, or ceramics; an industrial engineer in systems management or creating better conditions for workers; and a mechanical engineer in aeronautics, or industrial processes. There is a wide range of such areas of specialisation. In all cases the engineers are planning, designing and manufacturing, and building quite different things, and yet they are all dependent on the same common basis of scientific principles and engineering fundamentals. It is this common basis that allows new graduates to be somewhat flexible in their career choices, and practising engineers to develop new expertise as the forefront of engineering knowledge advances. Further information regarding careers may be obtained from the Course and Career Centre located in the Union building at Clayton and the Careers Advisory Service at Caulfield.
It is worthwhile remembering that half the goods or processes we routinely use now were not invented twenty years ago. So in twenty years, and perhaps much less, most of what engineers will be designing and producing will be things which we cannot anticipate, using materials which do not presently exist. A faster rate of change, particularly in technology, means that more situations in practice will not have been encountered before. New technologies and newly developing disciplines will give rise to new industries.
The doubling period of engineering knowledge is estimated to be a decade or less, depending on the field. It is therefore increasingly likely that engineers will not remain within a single field during their professional career. There is also convergence between different fields of engineering, and some observers predict that the existing distinctions between traditional disciplines of engineering will not survive into the next century. Engineering input is now required in totally new fields like the information industries, and space research.
The wide application of computers to perform routine tasks in engineering will free engineers to spend more time on other aspects of the design task like synthesis, creativity and assessment of multiple options. The progressive application of knowledge-based systems, even artificial intelligence, will, while reducing the more mundane tasks of an engineer, provide a much greater challenge in terms of personal judgment.
We are entering an era in which engineers will play a more dominant role than ever before. Requirements for both the quantity and quality of engineers are increasing. In terms of professional activity, it appears clear that in future greater portions of an engineer's time will be spent on failure investigation and litigation, on technical research and testing, on management, on operations and maintenance, on developing computer software, on infrastructure planning, and environmental resource issues. Less time will be spent on routine design.
There seems little doubt that the Australian engineering profession in the next decades will develop much closer links with the rapidly developing countries on the Pacific rim, including Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Contacts with these countries will range from joint ventures into massive projects, to the interchange of small high-tech devices and products.
You may think in reading this that engineers are supermen or women; only some of them are. But there is no doubt that the good engineers were good students, and the good students are those who from the beginning are competent in the basic subjects of English, mathematics and science.
If you enjoy mathematics, and if you find your science courses interesting and challenging, and if you like to solve problems and make things, you will probably like engineering, and enjoy the courses offered by the faculty. And when you graduate you will remember your studies in engineering as a time of steady and concentrated effort, intellectual stimulation and creative achievement with a group of fine people.
Good study habits are vital in undertaking an engineering course. The secret of success is steady and consistent study, right from the beginning of each year. If you feel at all concerned about your understanding of any subject, let us know straight away. All engineering students have ready access to tutors, lecturers and professors, and to the faculty office or the school administration offices to help solve problems of progress with studies. In particular, the subdeans at Clayton and Caulfield and the first-year coordinator at Gippsland are available to assist level-one students. The university also has student counselling, medical and other services. Remember that it is in your interest, the interest of the other students, and ours, if all the class keeps pace with the program of studies. If you begin to have study problems, let us know. If we can help we will.
W H Melbourne
Dean, Faculty of Engineering