Mechanical Engineering Overview - Overview PDF - PowerPoint - Podcast

	Ph.D, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Irvine MS, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Irvine BS, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Irvine
	Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, with research interests in particle mechanics with applications in HVAC and collaborative work with the Department of Biology on biomechanical studies of fish.
	Corinne has work experience in petroleum production and nuclear power, but chose education because it offers a unique combination of research on the cutting-edge of engineering and teaching.
	"I think it's important that everybody take an EIT (engineering training exam). It's your first step toward a professional engineering license."

"I think it's important that everybody take an EIT. It's an engineering training exam. It's your first step toward a professional engineering license. I took mine at the beginning of my senior year and I think that's sort of the time frame you should be looking to take it. If you choose an industrial job, there are many places that eventually will require that you take your professional engineering license. And you have to have your EIT before you take your professional engineering license. It comes in handy."

"And now I'm looking at, of all things, the evolution of fishtails. I'm in a collaborative project at the moment between the biologists or biology at UC Irvine and the mechanical engineering department."

Q: Tell us about the progression from how you get interested in engineering to start with, to what made the difference in getting into graduate school. And tell us where you went to school, the different places, things like that.
Connon: When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time with my father working under cars and just building things in the basement. And so, when it came time to choose a career path, there seemed to be only two choices -- mechanical engineering or architecture. And it just happened to be that I got accepted at a school that I felt most comfortable at, which is UC-Irvine for my Bachelor's program, so I decided to go into mechanical engineering. And the reason I liked the campus was purely because it had a lot of parks and very few buildings and it was small and quaint. But still, it was part of the UC system. I went through my college career and was completely convinced I was going to join the corporate world and just be a normal engineer and carry on my merry way. But closing in, I had a few internships near the end of my Bachelor's -- one with an oil company which was a lot of fun. I worked in the oil fields and got a taste of kind of the roughneck-type life and learned how engineering is applied in real life. And then I had an internship at a nuclear-power plant, which I thought would be very much up my alley, very high tech, very design-oriented. It was everything to the contrary; everything had already been done. They didn't want to change it and I didn't feel like I fit in. And I chose to go on to my Master's degree and at that time it was very controversial to go on to a Master's degree. I had lined up a job and I had a secure future and there were hardly any jobs when I graduated in 1992. There were very few engineering entry-level jobs available. So, when I decided to go to graduate school and give up a job offer, many people thought I was stupid. But the reason I did was, because I didn't see that job or any job that I could get a hold of at that time, giving me the flexibility to be kind of "cutting edge," if you want to say that. But mostly just using all my engineering talents, using everything I'd learned in the last four years. So, I went to graduate school and did my Master's at UCI under a professor, who I told, "I'm going to join the corporate world and I'm only going to be here for a year and a half or two years and that's it." And my professor gave me an ultimatum halfway through my Master's program. He said, "You have to decide if you're going to carry on for your Ph.D. or not, and you have to decide in a month because I have to find funding for you." So I had to sit down and make a choice, and how I made that choice was to evaluate what I had done in the past, all the different jobs I had including my internships, my different counseling jobs, and teaching positions I had had. And I came to the conclusion that the real job that I wanted integrated engineering -- cutting-edge engineering -- research and design, and would be teaching-oriented. And what's that equal? It equals a university life. So, I walked into his office and said, "Yeah, I'm going to go on for my Ph.D. Here I am, whether you like it or not." That's how I got to where I am now.

Q: Do you have to get straight A's as an undergraduate to succeed in graduate school?
Connon: No. I am definitely a testament to that. I had too much fun as an undergrad. It helps if you keep your average at least at a 3.2. If you're below that, many schools won't look at you. But you can still have fun and goof around and make mistakes your first two years but you have to turn it around in the end. If you want to go to graduate school, you have to turn your grades around and make some very positive grades -- very, very positive grades in the last few years of your education. It's also important to have contacts. Take time to learn a faculty member, introduce yourself when you're still a junior. Maybe you will work for them, maybe not, but just create a repertoire and when it becomes time for you to apply to graduate school, they'll become instrumental to your enrollment in the campus that you're currently at. But they'll also be instrumental in introducing you to many other professors in other universities and telling you things you probably would never know about like, "Yeah, they're only ranked 50 in the nation but their area of combustion is number two and you should really consider that. They're not top choice if you get in there." Those are important things to know, that you wouldn't find in a book or in the newspaper.

Q: Any surprises as a graduate student, that were unexpected as an undergraduate?
Connon: I think my perception of what graduate school was going to be like is not what it was. I came in thinking that I had an easy time with the courses when I was an undergrad, and so I'll have an easy time when I hit graduate school. But I nearly flunked out my first quarter of graduate school because I was in that frame of mind. So, I think just the work level that you have to put in, it's misleading. You think it's very much like you're an undergraduate and you got used to your undergraduate work. You could do this work; there was no problem. But the same step that you took from high school to college, you're going to take from undergraduate to graduate school. The workload was going to increase by that much. And that's shocking, just as it was when you started college, it's shocking.

Q: Talk about the same transition between Masters and Ph.D.
Connon: There is not a transition like that between a Master's and Ph.D. The transition between a Master's and Ph.D. is purely that you're given more responsibility. In a Master's program, I perceive that your thesis/dissertation topic is developed mostly by the professor with some interaction for yourself. But your Ph.D. dissertation topic is pretty much determined by where you want to go and how you want to take it there. And that's the difference between the two levels.

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