November 29, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR DENISE HARBERT IN IL
Hi Casey! I don't think any SET class is a waste of time! I think you should
definitely try engineering in high school before you start a college nursing
program. Nursing and engineering are often located in different colleges of a
university, so it may be very difficult to try engineering after you start
college if you are pursing a nursing degree. There are two completely
different reasons why I think you should look at engineering seriously while
you're still in high school:

Reason 1: You may change your mind about your career path and choose one of
the bio-related engineering fields instead of nursing. About a year ago, a
GEM-SET student named Jennifer asked a bunch of questions about
bioengineering. See the answers at:
http://www.uic.edu/orgs/gem-set/archive040105q4.htm to see if you might be
interested in some of the bio- and medical- related engineering careers
described there. My answer refers to two other student questions, whose
answers are at http://www.uic.edu/orgs/gem-set/archive040105q5.htm (SUNG C. IN
TX) and http://www.uic.edu/orgs/gem-set/archive040105q6.htm (PUI F. IN IL).

Reason 2: Knowing about engineering would make many things in your nursing
classes and nursing career easier to understand. Nurses have to operate a lot
of medical equipment and interpret the data that are produced by those
machines. Having a fundamental understanding of how those machines work would
make it easier to learn how to use them. Also, there are some required
courses in nursing that are based on concepts that you could learn in an
engineering class. A nurse once told me about her worst class in college -
the one class that she fought like a lunatic to barely pass. She said she
felt like there was some critical information that she did not know, as if she
had somehow missed one of the prerequisites for the class, even though she
knew she had not. When she described what she remembered of the class, I
realized immediately that it was based on finding maximums, minimums, and
limits of functions, all of which are concepts taught in calculus. Calculus
is an important math to learn for many applied fields, but it is usually not
required for nursing students because it takes up so much time and is only
directly applicable to a few of the classes a nurse needs. The calculus
concepts that would help you most in nursing are used heavily in engineering,
so taking engineering may be an applied way of learning what you need to know
to make some of those nursing classes easier.

I hope you decide to give engineering a try!
********************
November 17, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR DEBBIE BREDEL IN PA
Casey;
Taking a variety of classes while in high school always helps to
"broaden your horizons". Don't limit yourself at this time in your
life. You may find that you enjoy engineering as a field and would like
to pursue it further. Also, there is a field of engineering called
biomedical ( this is not offered at all universities, but was offered at
my school - the University of Pittsburgh) which ties engineering to the
medical field. This is something that might interest you. Since this is
not my field I cannot supply any details on the type of work that you
would be doing - but thought that at least it gives you something to
research.
Good luck.
*****************

November 13, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR SIDDIKA PASI IN NJ
Engineering curriculum at best teaches you problem solving. You learn a lot
of theories in engineering school and some of which you might not use in
real life. But taking these classes will expose you to a variety of
scenarios were problem solving in essential. Engineering will condition you
to properly formulate problems, devise different approaches to solving it
and applying it to find the real solution. As far as how Engineering
applies to nursing is that it will help you understand some phenomena in the
human body. For example, study of Fluid Mechanics can help you understand
blood flow in human arteries and so forth. So you can never go wrong with
taking an engineering class because it will teach you essential knowledge
and skill you will need in nursing.
********************
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI
Being neither an engineer nor a nurse, I feel fully qualified to
answer this one! I know from being a teacher that one of the biggest
hurdles for students of medical science (nursing included) is
translating real-world problems expressed in words into equations
expressed in math. (Patients don't tell you their problem as an
equation - they have a possibly incoherent set of symptoms and
complaints that you have to make sense of.) An engineering course in
high school, I would hope, would familiarize you with that vital step
in solving all sorts of problems, and the skill would transfer to
physiology and biochemistry and the technical background for nursing.
The skill would transfer to any sort of scientific problem solving;
and you might find that you could enjoy and succeed at a wider
variety of fields.

If you know the course has a good teacher, if you have or would learn
the math background, and if taking doesn't prevent you from taking
something more important to you, why not go for it?