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Michael Trimm
M. Abutayeh
EGN 3000 – Foundations of Engineering
29 October 2009
HW 5 – Electrical Engineering Monster Session Summary

On Friday, October 23rd, Dr. G. B. Montgomery, Academic Program Specialist

for the Department of Electrical Engineering spoke to students about his department. He

discussed salaries in the engineering fields, gave some figures about the department of

Electrical Engineering, and discussed the industry. Also present, were two of the student

organizations in the College of Engineering, IEEE and X-LABS.

Dr. Montgomery asked student to consider the question “What could working at

the intersection of the life sciences and engineering mean to you?” The thought here is

that when you combine the life sciences and engineering, great things can occur. He

discussed with us starting salaries at the Bachelor’s level. The highest starting salary is

for a Chemical Engineer at $65,466. Mechanical Engineering comes in second at

$58,648, and Computer Science in third at $58,419. He told us that Master’s degrees are

almost an essential thing to do and that salaries increase at the Master’s level.

In the Department of Electrical Engineering, there are twenty-four faculty, four

staff members, two hundred forty bachelor’s students, one hundred twenty-nine master’s

students and eighty-six PhD students. They offer research in many areas, including, but

not limited to, bioengineering and nanotechnology. Dr. Montgomery discussed

Engineering industry needs and told us the most important things employers in the

industry needs. These industry needs are communications (oral and written), analytical

problem solving, the ability to work in a team, leadership, the use of abstraction and
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modularity and best practices (e.g., documentation, testing). He also briefly discussed the

Engineering Leadership Honors Program, which is something I will never be able to get

into.

We were also told that the most important thing to get out of Engineering in

college is enjoyment. We can do this by participating in the many student organizations

the college of engineering hosts. One of the organizations is the Institute of Electrical and

Electronics Engineers, or IEEE. It was founded in 1963, has over 375,000 members, and

thirty-eight specialized societies. The IEEE chapter at USF participates in several

electrical engineering activities and anyone looking for more information can contact

Alex Dunbar, the president of IEEE.

The other organization present was X-LABS. They are engineers, physicists, and

science enthusiasts of all types. They are scavengers, hackers, and visionaries. They build

a wide variety of weird things such as Tesla coils, solar energy research, plasma speakers,

lasers, LINUX, space-altitude weather balloons,, and nuclear fusion. They are a member

driven organization and build whatever their members want. They meet on Fridays at

3:00pm in the Clean Energy Research Trailer. Anyone wanting more information can

contact Kevin Vaughn or look at the X-LABS website at www.xlabs-usf.com

In conclusion, the department of Electrical Engineering at the University of South

Florida has a wide variety of research areas, benefits society greatly and the industry is

looking for Engineers with great communications and collaboration skills.