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Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Schoolcraft college in Michigan teaches all these as a part of their associates in metallurgy and materials science. Basic welding and welding metallurgy are requirements as well as metallography, physical metallurgy, materials processes and properties, mechanical testing...etc.

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Schoolcraft college in Michigan teaches all these as a part of their associates in metallurgy and materials science. Basic welding and welding metallurgy are requirements as well as metallography, physical metallurgy, materials processes and properties, mechanical testing...etc.

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

I had mixed feelings about my undergrad program (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) because it was heavily theoretical and really intended for people who desired to go on to grad school. Of course, this was not explicitly advertised and disclaimed to me as a prospective student finishing my junior year of high school, and I felt pretty lost the first two years because I didn't have much of a frame of reference to attach the theory to and understand its relevance. I think the program would have been much more effective if the first year or two were just purely practical classes on things like heat treatment, forging, welding, etc. and then the last two years got deeper into the theory once people actually understood the macro-level phenomena so you could say "ohhhh, that's why that happens". That said, as a junior/senior with more agency over my class schedule (at that point it's more technical electives than core classes), I chose as many practical classes as I could such as welding workshop, corrosion, alloy design, etc. and got a lot out of them. I actually got my first job out of school specifically because of that welding class; it was an O&G company and they wanted someone with a welding  background but no one else had it. As a graduating senior, when I did my exit interview with my counselor, I brought this up and she said many students felt the same way about the curriculum. I think as far as the school was concerned, the undergrad program was a weed out to see who would graduate with 3.8+ GPA's that they could try to groom to stay there and do research, and everyone else was just a cash cow.

I don't mean for this to sound too jaded; it was a great school in a lot of ways and I benefited from its prestige (for example, it was easy to find a job because the school was heavily recruited from) but, looking back, I think I would have exited school as a more capable metallurgist had I gone to a lower ranked school with a more traditional, practical curriculum rather than a research university. Being almost 7 years out of school now, 95% of what I know and use on a daily basis is what I've learned on the job since graduation, and never once have I used a Schrodinger waveform equation.

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

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Steven Bradley
Principal
Bradley Consulting Services
Arlington Heights IL
(847) 977-3755
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Colorado School of Mines has a wonderful program in metallurgy with elective courses in welding and corrosion. I took the Corrosion Engineering course and it has been one of the most impactful courses in my entire career.

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Great to hear the feedback Chris, especially when it's positive.  :)

Go Orediggers!

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Gerald R. Bourne, Ph.D
Associate Department Head
Teaching Professor and Charles F. Fogarty Endowed Chair
George S. Ansell Dept. of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES
1500 Illinois Street
Office: HH115
Golden, CO 80401
303-273-3778

Original Message:
Sent: 04-20-2023 11:17
From: Christopher Crouse
Subject: Undergrad programs

Colorado School of Mines has a wonderful program in metallurgy with elective courses in welding and corrosion. I took the Corrosion Engineering course and it has been one of the most impactful courses in my entire career.

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Christopher Crouse
Senior Materials Engineer
Woodward Inc.
Fort Collins CO
9703023451

Original Message:
Sent: 02-15-2023 17:15
From: Steven Bradley
Subject: Undergrad programs

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

------------------------------
Steven Bradley
Principal
Bradley Consulting Services
Arlington Heights IL
(847) 977-3755
------------------------------

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Not really. It seems to be really dependent on school now. Mines, SDSMT, Cal State North Ridge, OSU (maybe) seem to still have courses specifically focus on welding, processing. Corrosion is widely taught in many schools nowadays. However, the amount of time spent that one would spent on these courses now (students between 2010 - present) is probably less than compares to say 20 years ago. As materials science has branched out to specialization, e.g. AM, polymer, semiconductor/electronic materials, nano/2D materials, biomedical, informatics, ICME etc. Each school, especially those that are R1 seem to be squeezing/packing more variety of courses in their curriculums (either undergrad or grad), with less focus on classic metallurgy (e.g. Concepts like constitutional undercooling may be incorporated as a chapter in a phase transformation class). 

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Materials engineering contains too many phenomena for all of them ever to be taught in a school program. And, the students, after graduation, will go into diverse jobs - some of them outside what their professors may have contemplated. In the end, students should have had exposure to the basic concepts, have acquired the basic jargon, have developed the ability to write and speak clearly, and the skill to use libraries and other information resources to learn enough more to handle the problem at hand. Critical thinking to differentiate truth from plausible nonsense is a large part of that skill. Correlation of information from different sources to create a consistent body of knowledge that rejects the erroneous information is a key part of that, and is becoming more crucial as use of the internet continues to grow, as low-quality journals proliferate, as the current generation of AI tools develops.

Not really. It seems to be really dependent on school now. Mines, SDSMT, Cal State North Ridge, OSU (maybe) seem to still have courses specifically focus on welding, processing. Corrosion is widely taught in many schools nowadays. However, the amount of time spent that one would spent on these courses now (students between 2010 - present) is probably less than compares to say 20 years ago. As materials science has branched out to specialization, e.g. AM, polymer, semiconductor/electronic materials, nano/2D materials, biomedical, informatics, ICME etc. Each school, especially those that are R1 seem to be squeezing/packing more variety of courses in their curriculums (either undergrad or grad), with less focus on classic metallurgy (e.g. Concepts like constitutional undercooling may be incorporated as a chapter in a phase transformation class). 

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Materials engineering contains too many phenomena for all of them ever to be taught in a school program. And, the students, after graduation, will go into diverse jobs - some of them outside what their professors may have contemplated. In the end, students should have had exposure to the basic concepts, have acquired the basic jargon, have developed the ability to write and speak clearly, and the skill to use libraries and other information resources to learn enough more to handle the problem at hand. Critical thinking to differentiate truth from plausible nonsense is a large part of that skill. Correlation of information from different sources to create a consistent body of knowledge that rejects the erroneous information is a key part of that, and is becoming more crucial as use of the internet continues to grow, as low-quality journals proliferate, as the current generation of AI tools develops.

Not really. It seems to be really dependent on school now. Mines, SDSMT, Cal State North Ridge, OSU (maybe) seem to still have courses specifically focus on welding, processing. Corrosion is widely taught in many schools nowadays. However, the amount of time spent that one would spent on these courses now (students between 2010 - present) is probably less than compares to say 20 years ago. As materials science has branched out to specialization, e.g. AM, polymer, semiconductor/electronic materials, nano/2D materials, biomedical, informatics, ICME etc. Each school, especially those that are R1 seem to be squeezing/packing more variety of courses in their curriculums (either undergrad or grad), with less focus on classic metallurgy (e.g. Concepts like constitutional undercooling may be incorporated as a chapter in a phase transformation class). 

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

John Grubb and Ho Lu Chan brought up great points about materials science and metallurgy being such a specialized field.  As I pondered retirement this year, I have had discussions with my R & D V.P. about what training that my replacement should have to support heavy duty truck brake and suspension product engineering. Expertise is needed in corrosion (road salt), steel forming, ductile cast irons, die cast aluminum, electro-plating, e-coats and paints, polymer injection molding, elastomer molding and environmental testing, heat treating, with some knowledge of welding and electronic soldering, machining, fracture mechanics, and failure analysis.  As an in-house materials expert, I use a 3-question guideline to write failure analysis reports for engineering life-cycle testing and warranty analysis: 

1.) What is it? (type of failure)

2.) What caused it? (over stress, fatigue or stress risers, unforeseen environmental factors)

3.) How to fix it. (Change Design, Material, or Process)

So the materials expert needs to know enough about many manufacturing processes to diagnose the failure when something goes wrong (no longer meets fit, finish or function). The one advantage of being in house, is that we have access to parts that were successful until "something changed" and we have general knowledge of each manufacturing line.

Materials engineering contains too many phenomena for all of them ever to be taught in a school program. And, the students, after graduation, will go into diverse jobs - some of them outside what their professors may have contemplated. In the end, students should have had exposure to the basic concepts, have acquired the basic jargon, have developed the ability to write and speak clearly, and the skill to use libraries and other information resources to learn enough more to handle the problem at hand. Critical thinking to differentiate truth from plausible nonsense is a large part of that skill. Correlation of information from different sources to create a consistent body of knowledge that rejects the erroneous information is a key part of that, and is becoming more crucial as use of the internet continues to grow, as low-quality journals proliferate, as the current generation of AI tools develops.

Not really. It seems to be really dependent on school now. Mines, SDSMT, Cal State North Ridge, OSU (maybe) seem to still have courses specifically focus on welding, processing. Corrosion is widely taught in many schools nowadays. However, the amount of time spent that one would spent on these courses now (students between 2010 - present) is probably less than compares to say 20 years ago. As materials science has branched out to specialization, e.g. AM, polymer, semiconductor/electronic materials, nano/2D materials, biomedical, informatics, ICME etc. Each school, especially those that are R1 seem to be squeezing/packing more variety of courses in their curriculums (either undergrad or grad), with less focus on classic metallurgy (e.g. Concepts like constitutional undercooling may be incorporated as a chapter in a phase transformation class). 

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?

Is sufficient metallurgy and related topics such as welding, corrosion and microstructural analysis being taught in undergraduate materials science programs?