Undergraduate Students | Graduate Students | Alumni
Mechanical Engineering Program
What is Mechanical Engineering?
Mechanical engineering is broadly concerned with energy, manufacturing, and design of machines. Mechanical engineers conceive, plan, design, and direct the manufacture, distribution, and operation of a wide variety of devices, machines, and systems—including complex human-machine systems—for energy conversion, environmental control, materials processing, transportation, materials handling, and other purposes. The field includes thermal-fluids engineering and mechanical systems engineering.
What do ME's do?
Mechanical
engineers (MEs) find a wide variety of career opportunities in industry,
government, and education. Mechanical engineers form an integral part
of most industries, including aerospace firms, biomedical equipment manufacturers,
energy-generation utilities, automobile manufacturers, food- and metal-processing
industries, petroleum refineries, electronic equipment and computer manufacturers,
heavy construction and vehicle manufacturers, HVAC manufacturers, and
farm implement companies.
Where do our ME graduates get jobs?
Our
ME graduates have careers that take them all over the world and allow
them to do all sorts of different things. Most undergraduate students
get their first job in the Midwestern United States. Principal employers
of our recent graduates include:
Consulting—Accenture, Seimens Transportation, Shive-Hattery, Stanley
Energy—Alliant Energy, MidAmerican Energy
Food—General Mills, Nestle-Purina, Quaker Oats
Government—Department of Defense, Oakridge National Lab, NASA, Rock Island Arsenal
Manufacturing—Alcoa, Allsteel, Boeing, Caterpillar, Centro, John Deere, Emerson Process Management, General Electric, Hon, IBM, Maytag, Micron Tech., Pella, Rockwell-Collins, Silgan Plastics, 3M