Opportunities to be creative in engineering (esp civil or enviro)

Parents Forum
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<p>I’m a former civil engineer who found the constraints of civil engineering too much. After finishing the program it did not help that there were few jobs in my birth country, so I moved here and spent a few more years studying computer science… Then human factors engineering. I’m working on some pretty interesting stuff right now, things like Internet radio and the like.</p>

<p>I would not worry too much about ‘art’. I minored in Architecture, acing all 6 classes I took, and my art skills can best be described as ‘pitiful’ (Rapidographs, eek) Compare this to DD1 (1st year Architecture) whose artistic skills are very good. I was more into problem solving than pure Frank ‘what was he drinking when he designed it’ Gehry… </p>

<p>Here’s an example of where you can be creative as a civil engineer. How do you design a foundation for a building on a steep slope where half the foundation sits on top of play-doh (watery clay) and the other half was rock that was jackhammered out? You better believe it ain’t in the textbook. Better yet, how do you keep the basement dry next to a natural spring without sump pumps? I had to solve both of these in the first and last house I designed. The answer to that was in a naval engineering textbook.</p>

<p>I would look into Architectural Engineering as others have suggested. But engineering in general is more about problem solving, combining or using existing solutions in novel ways, than outright boom! pie in the sky innovation. Ultimately, someone else has the same fundamental idea.</p>

<p>True ‘creativity’ like the legends of Kelly Johnson in engineering will usually be at the R&D labs of a major, deep-pocketed organization. Civil may be more in materials science or engineering and the like, or some deep specialty and a few graduate degrees, while enviro may be more limited due to fundamental chemistry/physics related constraints. </p>

<p>I’ll also echo MiamiDAP’s response. Computer software is about the only form of engineering I can think of where you can - cheaply - demonstrate creativity all with a PC or a Mac and a copy of your friendly Visual Studio and the like. But, just like art, not everyone can be a great programmer. In my 30 years of software, I’ll guess maybe one in ten people who write software for a living have the ‘spark’. The other nine are competent problem solvers, but they lack the extra ‘gee, maybe it can work better this way’ spark.</p>

<p>Sorry for the ramble, but I guess the OP needs to decide if we’re talking about creativity as in ‘find a creative way to solve an existing problem’ or more of the artistic creativity that knows far fewer bounds and is not shy to push the limits.</p>

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<p>Some additional ramblings from my almost 30 years in Corporate America playing the creative mind…</p>

<p>Creativity is best either in a starving start-up, or in a deep wallet established place like Google, Microsoft, and the like. This is in stark contrast to the 1980’s where there was a lot more of it to go around.</p>

<p>Regardless of work situation, don’t expect that you’ll be handed the responsibility for the design of a new skyscraper, bridge, or operating system a month after college. It took me nearly 15 years to get to do work that I actually enjoyed. Your creative urges may have to be satisfied with writing the next debug trace module instead of the kernel (apologies in advance). Sylvan8798 put it a lot more elegantly :-)</p>

<p>Some fields seem to confuse creativity and originality with sheer bricklaying - meaning, you can be the best C++ coder, but if the job description says J2EE, you’re SOL. (translation - software creativity eventually comes crashing down at the realization that creativity is far less important to most employers than knowing the latest and greatest here-today-gone-tomorrow tool). Real engineering is not like this.</p>

<p>The creative professions are not for the thin of skin. You have to flaunt it if you have it, defend your designs to the death, yet accept a healthy serving of humble pie if the other guy’s solution is better. Arch students have lots of design reviews for a reason.</p>

<p>In engineering, esp. civil, more often than not there’s usually only one right answer - the creative part is how you arrive at the solution, and small differences in cost, schedule, etc. And that’s because of the laws of physics. Also, Civil Engineering is a very ‘conservative’ profession and things are difficult to change.</p>

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<p>OP suggest to your daughter to contact her placement center at her school and find out what the job placement situation is for architects vs. engineers.</p>

<p>I would assume that there are a lot of Archtects that were concentrating on the housing market that have had to shift to another specialty. So there maybe a glut of Architects in the job market?</p>

<p>I understand that she cannot choose her degree based on economics. But it does factor into the equation.</p>

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<p>duplicate post, sorry.</p>

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<p>My husband and I are both structural engineers (we met in grad school). He is a much better engineer. The reason? He is more creative! I am good at little details, but big picture stuff is hard for me. </p>

<p>Architects come up with the WACKIEST designs, and expect the structural engineer to come up with the structure to support it. The Portland (Maine) Public Market was a good example of this. The architect, based in New Jersey, wanted a “light, airy” design. My husband had to explain that the snow loads in Maine are much higher than in New Jersey, so that would be a hard goal to achieve. But DH worked hard on it, and came up with a creative solution. In this building, the structural elements were all exposed, so HIS input was on display. The building won several awards, including one from the American Institute of Architects. It was also featured in a wood design magazine.</p>

<p>We now have our own firm, just the two of us. It works out well, because DH takes care of the creative aspects of the designs, and I help out with the details and calculations. Our work slowed last year, but this year has picked up again. We make a decent income. The work changes from day to day. It is never boring! My kids love driving around town and seeing “Dad’s building” or “Mom’s building.” :)</p>

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<p>MaineLonghorn, lol, I had a boss who used to say the structural engineers want to put columns down everywhere and the Architects want to hang the buildings from skyhooks :)</p>

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<p>LOL, sylvan, that sounds about right!</p>

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<p>thanks everyone for your comments. DD is still working through a bunch of things, and I have been discussing some other issues with her, so I have not shared this yet. I hope to sometime soon though.</p>

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<p>BBD- IMHO September of Freshman year is an exceptionally poor time for your D to be grappling with big questions like 'what do I want to do when I grow up and what will the economic picture for architects look like in 4-6 years". She is dealing with a lot- re-entry from gap year, cultural and religious issues, transitions, heavy workload, etc. If it were my D- I would encourage her to just tough out the first semester and then re-evaluate both her interest in architecture and her interest in potential other majors.</p>

<p>My kids all got to college and after about 3 weeks decided that everything they wanted was bad and everything they hadn’t signed up for or prepared for was good or better. It settles down. There is no major at RPI that won’t require heavy lifting. I realize that heavy lifting when you love something is easier than heavy lifting when you hate it- but she just got there! Try and get her to see that she’s facing very normal adjustment issues, coping with a super heavy workload compared to gap year, transitioning to college. After a semester under her belt she’ll be in a much better state of mind to think about engineering or even something completely different. But it’s just noise in her head right now to have to contemplate yet another set of choices.</p>

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<p>That was my wifes reaction. I am aware however that it is common for archies to drop out, and fairly quickly (DD says one from her section has already done so) As she says, why suffer through studio if thats not what she’s going to do.</p>

<p>However she DID decide to stick it out for the semester. I PROMISED her that meanwhile I would assist her in researching alternatives . This thread is part of that.</p>

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<p>blossom,</p>

<p>Since I can’t PM you, I cannot discuss relative difficulties of different majors at RPI. Suffice it to say that even Fiske refers to the notoriously difficult Architecture program.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it’s difficult like Premed difficult or engineering difficult… DD1’s significant other is premed, and I’d rather take 80 credit hours of studio a week than Phys 1, Chem 1, Biology 1, and Calc 1 all in the same century, all but Calc with multi-hour labs, let alone the same semester. </p>

<p>From what DD1 reports, the difficulty is that in the abovementioned subjects one more or less knows what the answer is - in Architecture, even Studio 1, there’s no firm ‘this is it’ moment, there’s no ‘good enough’ and many hours of armchair quarterbacking involved. 5 hours of studio drains her as much as 5 hours of lab drains the premed people…</p>

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<p>Bookmarked</p>

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<p>Architecture is notoriously difficult everywhere. It’s difficult in grad school too. It was certainly way, way, way, way, way more stressful than my four years at Harvard. :)</p>