Athira Nair Surendran

COM 307

Question 3 (Page 11)

Think of your own engineering major or specialty. List some engineering fields related in varying
degrees of closeness to yours. What knowledge do you share with people in these fields? What
problems can you foresee in communicating with engineers in other fields? What problems would you
face if you had to talk about your field to a non-engineering audience?

My engineering major is mechanical engineering. Some engineering fields close to mine are civil and
electrical engineering. Mechanical engineering has a lot in common with civil engineering especially.
Civil engineers deal with structures that do not move, while mechanical engineers deal with structures
that do move. Electrical engineers and mechanical engineers work together in a lot of fields. A common
industry that shows this is the automotive industry, where mechanical parts need electrical components
to work in a car. During college, mechanical, civil and electrical engineering majors need to take classes
which pertain to all three of the fields. For example, as a mechanical engineering major, I had to take
circuits analysis and statics class.

A problem that I can see in communicating with engineers in other fields is not being able to explain a
concept to the other engineer. As engineers, we are expected to know what we are doing because that
is what determines if a project is going to be successful. Also, we are supposed to ask questions so that
we understand the task at hand thoroughly. If I was working on a project with an engineer who is not a
mechanical engineer, I would have a hard time explaining what I know to them. Another possible
problem is that there could be disagreements on how to approach and solve a problem, since every
engineer thinks differently. A civil engineer can take a different approach compared to a mechanical
engineer.

One problem that I would face if I had to talk about my field to a non-engineering audience would be
explaining what we do and how we do it. I feel like it would be hard to explain because there are a lot of
things that we had to spend four years trying to understand. Also, mechanical engineering is a broad
field and when a non-engineering audience asks me what to mechanical engineers work for, the answer
is endless because it can be applied to many industries. Not giving a specific answer will make me lose
my audience because it would be overwhelming for them to think about all the directions a mechanical
engineer could go.