CU Boulder MechE and Aero Engineering

College Majors Engineering Majors
,
1

My DD is passionate about aviation but wants to major in MechE to have more career flexibility, wanting to be the MechE student working in a company that is aviation-oriented in some way… and be able to shift industries if DD wants or the aero industry cycles down eventually.

At some schools, DD could major in MechE but still do research with Aero faculty, join Aero student clubs, and pursue an accelerated MS degree in Aero.

Any insight into how silo’d the Mech E majors/ dept are from the Aero majors/ dept at CU Boulder would be really helpful as I can’t find indication of any collaboration or overlap between these two departments when I’m on the CU website.

Thanks in advance!

2

Have her set up a meeting with the dept head and ask. I’m sure they’d love to meet with her - or someone will.

Even as a MechE she can likely take aero electives.

My kid is a MechE working at an aero firm.

1 Like
3

I can’t tell you about CU, but Colorado State allows you to major in mechanical engineering with a concentration in aerospace. They are not as well known for aerospace, but have recently landed some big aero contracts. As she wouldn’t be a ME competing with AE’s, but rather part of the ME/AE department, there might be more research opportunities. Aerospace - Department of Mechanical Engineering

1 Like
4

Yes I’ve noticed that at some schools, MechE and Aero are in the same department, or have really substantial overlap, and at some schools it’s also pretty easy to double major. I’m not seeing as much overlap in the curricula at CU and I agree that it’s also not obvious whether there’s a lot of social overlap.

I would suggest that she look into some specific student clubs of interest, and contact them directly (by email or whatever contact method they give on their club web sites). My son is really into FSAE, and when he was evaluating colleges, he found that most FSAE clubs were very responsive and happy to talk to him and meet him (and to show him around when he visited). These informal club visits turned out to be the best thing he did to learn about being an engineering student at each school.

1 Like
5

I wouldn’t be too concerned. Aerospace is made up of a large amount of mechanical engineers. Yes, very large overlap if you position yourself accordingly.

3 Likes
6

Fwiw, all the engineering students are housed in the same dorm so there should be some.

1 Like
7

No direct experience at CU Boulder, but one of the clues at any school is to look at the research being conducted on campus and then looking up the team members to see their backgrounds. Research | College of Engineering & Applied Science | University of Colorado Boulder

For this hypersonic space research the staff backgrounds span Aero, MechE, Materials, EECE, Chem, Math, etc…

Your daughter can reach out to the professors conducting research she finds interesting and ask if they have undergrad mech es on their team too but my bet is the answer will be a resounding ‘yes’.

FWIW, my chem E daughter did research for Lockheed Martin and worked with ASEs, Mech Es, and Material Science Engineers. The professor running the project was a Mech E.