|
A: FROM MENTOR NATALIE GIVANS. TO READ NATALIE'S BIO
CLICK HERE.
Like most young adults, I had not even heard of system engineering
when
I entered MIT as a Chemical Engineer. I switched to Electrical
Engineering in Sophomore year for a number of reasons and
still did not
appreciate what a systems engineer would do. When I joined
Booz Allen,
I finally discovered system engineering and fell in love with
it as a
discipline. The reason is that it is a field that requires
the ability
to pull in information from a variety of sources, analyze
multiple
scenarios and possibilities, learn to display the information
in a
variety of structured, logical ways yet still make it clear
for a
non-technical human to understand what the system will do
when it's
developed and operational. I may be stretching past what you've
asked,
but a field of research regarding the differences between
how men and
women think about problems and problem solving has shown that
in many
cases, women are multi-taskers, able to analyze and think
about multiple
problems at the same time. The field of system engineering
is really
ideal for how a person with multi-tasking capability thinks!
And it is
always interesting and rewarding if you enjoy that kind of
problem
solving. I also think that it is one of the technical disciplines
that
combines the technical with the human touch - if you are good
at people
and love to interact with people and you love technology,
this is a
great career field. We have the need for many more system
level
engineers and have great trouble finding true talent in this
area.
As for educational training, it is best to get a wide variety
of
analysis techniques that come from software engineering, math,
logic,
cost benefit analysis, and system engineering fundamentals
courses as
well as understanding of how humans think (because you need
to be able
to express your ideas to people and you benefit from being
able to
motivate people to accept and try your ideas if you're the
team leader
for the project). It is also important to be exposed to several
courses
on specific engineering fields so that you get a wide range
of ideas
brewing in your mind. The system engineering field deals with
ability
to define concepts for the operational system, requirements
analysis
(e.g., what should the system do for a customer), architecture
design
(e.g., how do you determine the best way to allocate requirements
to
system hardware and software components), hardware and software
design,
integration and test, and other areas. You can specialize
in parts of
the life cycle, and not have to be a master of all areas.
A great
system engineer is one who understands how to think about
the problem,
where to draw ideas for solutions, how to lead a team to successful
design and integration, and how to make appropriate trade-offs
between
cost, schedule, performance, technology risk, security, maintainability,
reliability, etc. It may seem daunting, but if you can start
out with
system component analysis and design, and then work your way
up to
system's level analysis, you'll find you can learn one step
at a time
and become expert at the things you enjoy and are good at.
Let us know if you need help finding a good program in a particular
region of the country.
|
