Live Virtual Tour: Mechanical Engineering

Just realized I was muted hello.

How's it going?

Glad to see people joining us today. That's awesome.

Cool.

Well, I'm gonna let people keep filtering in a little bit more and then we'll get started.

Thanks for joining us today.

Hey Goose.

Thank you there new.

Hi everyone, how many people I'm so excited.

It's going to be good.

Cool well wait a couple more minutes but while we're waiting if everyone wants to I was just going to ask if he wants to throw in the chat with they're interested in but you're joining the mechanical engineering torso.

Probably a pointless question.

Yeah, feel free to put in if you're Bowman MEC, which goose and I both are, so that's kind of cool.

Cool.

Not sure, haven't looked in by match. Cool, well we can give a brief overview of the bottom and major as well. You know just to let you all know what kind of other majors we have at CSU.

So yeah, I'll just do a brief intro. I guess about that while we're waiting for a couple more people to join us. But basically what you can do here at CSU is actually major in biomedical engineering, but what that looks like is a double major, so you will do five years. Here at CSU, you'll get one full major in biomedical engineering and then another full major in partner major in goose. In ice case, it is our partner. Major is mechanical engineering which is really cool in the other. Partner majors are electrical engineering and chemical and biological engineering.

But it is a double major, so it's not like we're biomedical engineers with with a focus in mechanical, or we're not vice versa. We are full by men in full Mechanical Engineers, so that's why we are talking to you today about mechanical engineering. We are taking in will take and have taken all of the classes that all Mechanical Engineers will take. Its here at CSU. So pretty cool opportunity to kind of get a lot of experience with in a shorter amount of time. But yeah, if you're also just still interested in mechanical engineering only.

That is totally OK and I'm biased, but I think it is an awesome major.

Alright awesome, should we get started goose.

There.

Awesome hi everyone. My name is Sarah. I am also a fourth year studying biomedical and mechanical engineering. So goose and I have known each other for a while.

Let's see my friends, she, her hers and I'm heavily involved with Society of women engineers on campus and then I just left mountain biking and going outside and it is absolutely beautiful up here in Fort Collins. So definitely a great choice to come to. CSU also just wanted to say that if anyone has any questions please throw in the chat. We do not care if you interrupt us, we just want to answer all of your questions so please feel free will be monitoring the chat to make sure that we answer your questions.

Otherwise, I guess we can continue, so just want to give a brief real life look at what are CSU campus looks like? We have. Basically we are land grant University, so it's really great about that. Is that all this green space that you can see where we do all of our sports, have picnics, anything like that will never go away because that is donated to us by the state of Colorado and then also here is our football stadium which is pretty brand new and then down that left corner there.

We're actually building another residence Hall for for Sears, so lot of really cool new advancements here at Colorado State.

Do you want to introduce the program goose?

Awesome so I can talk about the success center. You can talk about design studios.

Cool, so what's really cool about our Donna Susie law student success center is that this is specific for engineers, so the entire CC campus actually has a student success center. But what's really great about having one specific to engineers is that we have a lot of different types of interviews that engineers have to go for. Go through to get hired, and they were very behavioral. Slash, technical based. So along with our resumes that might look a little bit more different for engineers based or.

As compared to other majors, so what's really happening here in this office is a lot of career development. They host mock interviews, resume reviews. This is where our career fairs planned. This is where a lot of our diversity student orgs hold their meetings and we have our based offices in here. Student embassadors also work in here where we are not all virtual. Our associate Dean also has this office in here and then. This is really where you would go if you had any questions.

Basically, on anything about the College of engineering, whether you are visitor or a student here at CSU.

Oh

Yeah, definitely goose. That's actually a really great thing to mention. While this success center does allow or hosts a lot of mock interviews, an resume reviews our student organizations here on campus actually do so much in terms of getting our engineers career development skills sweet like goose mentioned, which is society donors does evening with industry.

Society of Hispanic professional engineers does resume rush and then National Society of black engineers does mock interviews with Lockheed Martin. I think it's pretty sick that you already get to mock interview with people who are and will be interviewing you in the future. So I think that's really a great opportunity and that is all hosted within the Student Success Center.

Oh sorry, sorry. Just wanted to mention that you will see some pictures with people without masks on in close proximity with each other. All of these pictures were taken before covid. Just a little disclaimer.

Nope, I think that's it, yeah, but so you can basically print not for free but with student tuition on campus. You do not have to pay for anchor paper.

Yeah.

As engineers we do not run out of Credit. Goose is just special.

That's a great question, Eric. Do you want to touch on that goose?

Yeah.

Definitely.

Cool, just another study space. Do you have anything else to add for study spaces goose?

Oh

that's good.

What other design softwares do we have?

Before.

Well, we have a matlab alot of Mechanical Engineers will use Matlab. We have Excel so we so as a CC student you get also Office 365 to get OneNote, Excel all that stuff with it which is really nice and then trying to think of others.

Actually, what's really cool is that you will have access now to our do we know actually a lot, and this is actually new thing. So you guys are pretty lucky we didn't get this or freshman year the freshman this year for mechanical engineering got their own Arduino kits. For those of you who don't know in Arduino is, it's like a little baby microchip processor. What's really cool is that you can actually download an app or on your computer that you can program this little Arduino to do things which if you connect it to a circuit it can light up different leads.

It can make a cargo anything like that, so there's a lot of cool. I don't know bout like software technically, but a lot of cool, different skills in Little Knickknacks. It you will get as a mechanical engineer here, it's easier if that helps answer your questions, Axel.

I'm done.

Yeah.

I haven't, but I can talk a little about it. I will definitely say if you are interested in it and I know you might have attended the webinar cure about it. It is definitely possible and I will just say if you are heart set on it, do it as early as possible, especially for the mechanical engineering curriculum or bio men met curriculum. I highly suggest doing it either the first semester or the second semester of your sophomore year.

That way you have your freshman year and you're integrated into CSU. You can talk with your advisor right off the bat. Tell your advisor you want to study abroad at first of all, they will help you. But then with that second semester then you can go abroad. A lot of our engineers actually go to Australia because they have a lot of engineering classes, but when I was researching study abroad, I saw a lot in Ireland, Germany, China and in Europe basically as well. But I the only reason why I suggest second year is because then.

It's much easier to find the lower level classes like calculus, biology, do some general education classes, which we call AUC sees here and that really helps kind of just be able to find those classes more and keep your credit load up. Otherwise, if you do miss those classes that you have needed to really take that semester, you can take them over the summer once you come back, which is what a lot of my friends did. Other than that they were fine and it did not hold him back. It all worked out great, so.

I think that's great that you're really interested in study abroad. Definitely, definitely suggest it.

Cool, I just realized I have control slides. Will skip some of the other majors just 'cause I want to keep us on time, but we will go over the bio medical lab just because we go synagis and I both have.

Experience with this class. So what's really cool is that if you are majoring in biomedical engineering as well, you will take with lab your thirst, your third year and basically it combines every single biomedical engineer in that one class. So what's really cool is that usually you'll either be with mostly Mechanical Engineers for your time here at CSU and Biomedical Engineers, but with this class it will actually take Biomedical Engineers from each of the three partner majors. Electrical engineering, chemical, biological engineering in mechanical engineering.

And throw into this one lab in what's really cool is that in this lab it'll teach you how to be an engineer from step 12.

Step 20,000 if you really want it to be so. We have about five group projects here in this course, and they range from anything of hey prostate cancer. How doctors search for prostate cancer and signs of prostate cancer is actually not very accurate. Research how to figure out how to do better and present it and then our last project actually was working with a real LS patient patient with LS my bad and working with him on what kind of communication system?

Can we install into his wheelchair and home that will allow him to communicate when he needs something for his caretakers as his disease progresses? So really it's a whole wide range of things. In this lab you also get.

Opportunities to work with an ultrasound machine. ECG's, which are the Little Electro myo cardio graph stickers that you stick on your muscles and then think you goose and then they feel like they.

Sense the electric synapses within your muscles and then that can actually show you what kind of muscles in my flexing. We use those machines in terms of studying how we could make a prosthetic, but really the reason why I'm saying it teaches you how to be an engineer from A-Z is because you are presented with a very broad problem and then you yourself as a group have to research the problem. Really, learn about the problem, develop an idea of a solution and then present it to the class.

It is pretty intense, but I feel like I've become a much better engineer from it. Yeah, highly suggest if you are interested in bioengineering. This is like one of the hallmark labs of that degree as well. Do anything else to add goose in terms of this lab.

Cool thanks.

Alright, I'll introduce the building and then we can go into manufacturing goose for you. So we just kind of talked about the Scott Bio Engineering Building. Now that was our very new building and we're going to move into our older building more, but I don't know if Guice agrees with me. But this is like my favorite building 'cause this is where all the really The Dirty work happens. This is where, like you can actually get your hands dirty and really messing with everything that you've been taught in lecture. And it's just so freeing to have that opportunity. So this is our engineering building.

It basically hosts a lot of classes for mechanical engineering, civil civil engineering, excuse me and electrical and Computer Engineering. This is just another view of it, but essentially down the basement is where all the Magic happens, and that's where you really get all your hands on lab tier in the mechanical engineering program.

Who is?

Yeah, so this is the very famous Clock project that all Mechanical Engineers here do at CSU. I think it's been done honestly, I don't know for how long years decades. So it's really cool is that you basically get to machine every single thing here on this Clock. So what's really cool is that with your tuition funding, we're able to provide each student a stock piece of metal.

So we have aluminum. We have brass, we have steel and basically from there you get to machine the base. This is a pen and pencil Holder and then the plastic face.

It's really awesome about this class. Like Goo said, you're held to really tight dimensions, so you kind of get to learn. First of all, in your other class that we were taught with SolidWorks, you learn about GD and T and then you come into this class using that GD and T knowledge to really understand. OK well, he gave me a piece of paper that told me to you know.

What's the word melvis face to this precise inches? And if you're slightly off, you will be knocked down points. It's very rigorous, but it's just a really great opportunity to push yourself. Remember the first time that I stepped on a late I was shaking and sweating. I wanted to cry I was super scared but as goose mentioned Ryan, one of the he's just like basically a helping teacher. He really spent two hours with me on that machine in now I could walk.

Right up to it and feel super confident on it, so it's just an amazing opportunity. Here's another one of our projects. This is an engineer scribe. For those of you who don't who do not know what describe is. Essentially, if you want to mark something on a piece of metal or a part that you can't really see with pen, you would do a light scratch with these. And this was talking about the Acetylene torch that he used. You can actually that's what we did to really Harden these pieces of steel so they're really indestructible, honestly.

Very kind of scary, but I use this to poke belt holes in my belt because I kind of I'm small so very useful so far for sure.

That's all I had to add, oh.

No.

Yeah.

Oh

yeah.

Yeah, so something. I actually did an internship in manufacturing this past summer and something I found out is that I think we actually did get a new machine that has five axes, but a lot of times. What's really cool about this class is that while we might work with CNC machines that have three axes, this is like this is very it's I think of 50 or 45 degree angle.

What he was able to do was actually develop, and this is actually one of its like strengths. The teacher is developing a.

A vice for holding our base at a certain angle so it's really cool is that while we might not have, you know this perfectly brand new 5 axis system. Although I think we do now. Like you said, he will teach you how to work around that, and that's actually from my experience. What half manufacturing engineering is because a lot of times these design engineers will not design something that's actually manufacturable, so you really have to work with them on OK.

This is at a crazy angle. I can't get my machine in that and they go OK. Well what can I do to change it? Change this one thing and I will build a vice so I can get that angle and that's really the difference between design, mechanical engineering and manufacturing, mechanical engineering and it's really cool to see that with this lab that's all I had to add.

Yeah, actually you just reminded me of something to say goose. So when we were taking this class and what we've heard is that we've actually seen representatives from see what's the school called Mind School, Colorado School of mines. They have actually come in, looked at our basement full of these machines to try to figure out how they can build a manufacturing lab just like this one. So we're actually a really cool like new model of how manufacturing labs should look in terms of University Teaching.

In a lot of colleges are now following in our footsteps, so it's pretty cool to be like one of the ones that everyone looks up to.

Alright, I can talk a little more about our idea to product lab. This is a really cool lab because while it is within the mechanical engineering like basement, an wing of the engineering building, this is actually open to all students on campus. What's really cool is that you can just sign up to take a little baby training course, pay semester fee, and you can actually use these machines. And basically it's just all these 3D printing machines. What's really great about that? Actually I just kind of went in there and they do a lot of FDM, which is what you think about when you think about 3D printing, it's.

You extruding plastic and it hardens in some sort of shape. We also have a machine that prints with carbon fiber, which is really cool. I want to use that and then we have a couple other machines that a little bit more advanced. We have one that prints with this polymer and it's a lot more accurate than just these more basic printers, but basically you can use this lab for anything personal to academic base so.

Kind of skews mentioned you can go into the manufacturing lab that we talked about previously for your senior design capstone project. You can also go into the 3D printing lab to build and print things for that project. I know gooses team actually for one of our design classes, built one of their projects with the three printers, so I think that's really cool.

Do anything else to add for the idea to product lab.

OK, sounds good. I'll keep talking while goose is gone. We're just so excited to show you guys are projects. As you can tell, we're super super just passion about mechanical engineering. We just think it's just such a good field to go into and you can really do anything. So feel free to ask us more questions. Like I said, Mechanical Engineering is not just design, it is also manufacturing it's processed systems. It's R&D. It's so many things. Do you have your project?

Yeah, that's awesome. You'll notice a common theme engineer is all about struggle and then learning from that struggle. So we're in a little bit behind. So I think will rush through a couple of these other labs materials lab. You'll actually be in this lab for multiple different classes for mechanical engineering. One of them is instrumentation, and that's where you really learn. Kind of the necessary skills of how to set up an experiment, how to run an experiment, and how to analyze data. So one of the really cool softwares that you will use.

And learn in this lab is Labview, which I know companies like Medtronic uses. That's kind of the main one 'cause biomedical mind here. That's the company and I'm thinking about. But it's really cool because the stuff that you learn here at CSU in your manufacturing and mechanical engineering curriculum will be used outside in industry. And it literally works seamlessly into it. It's just it's pretty awesome, so definitely whatever you learn wherever you go, whatever software or techniques that you learned, put 'em on your resume.

It sounds great.

Do you want to talk about a little bit? Mick, mechatronics, goose?

OK.

Oh

Oh yeah.

Wow.

Joystick.

I think another one of the design constraints on this class is. It needs to be autonomous, so I think your your example was pretty cool goose because wow, the user controlled the board. That meant that larger scale machine you're not telling you what to do. It knows what to do from your program, so that's something that's really cool and autonomy, I think is really, really useful to learn and practice.

Especially as an undergrad here at CSU, because that's where the world is going. So actually in our design class in Mac 200, was it no 20222 we actually had a design autonomous car to do something for us, so you're really getting that hands-on like experience of hey design this from scratch and you're like what's going on. I have nothing right off the bat as a second year, so it's really cool. That's all I had to add. I think for this one.

We can just touch on thermal fluids a little bit. You will take this as a mechanical engineer. I think either your third or fourth year. It depends, and usually it's just a one credit lab because what it really does is basically combine your learning from thermodynamics. An fluid mechanics into one lab. So you basically take 3 credits of lecture for both of those classes and then after you're all done you'll take this lab, which kind of applies that hands-on learning. So both civil engineers and Mechanical Engineers use this lab.

Civil engineers will look a little bit more about, for example, shake weight table. You know if we put a structure on the shape weight table and there's an earthquake, will it collapse? Or if we put a structure inside like a skyscraper inside a wind tunnel, which I will move to this one.

Uh, a wind tunnel you can see, like how the air flows around that skyscraper? Fun fact. That's actually why if you look at the new.

Call the world trace Trade Center buildings anymore, but those new buildings that replaced the World Trade centers. The top of them is actually shifted once at like a little bit like as a twist. And that's actually to mitigate the effects of.

Uh, the wind kind of surrounding it, so that's something that you learn in this lab for Mechanical Engineers. It's a law about fluid mechanics, which you'll see here just looking at how does water flow around a particular part or system. So in a real life example, a lot of Engineers look at how does air flow around a Tesla or an F1 car? Things like that. So that's kind of the types of applications that you would learn in this lab.

OK, cool, we're going to skip smash lab an electrical just to save time will go to this slide. Do we want to talk about? I think this was senior design capstone right goose?

OK, cool.

Uh, not for oh I will add just kind of going off of senior design. Another thing that you do your final year, whether that be your 4th year, you're 50 or 30 are you will take technical electives. So what's really cool is that we get a lot of questions about in aerospace concentration, which I think is great. We actually just kind of officially launched this aerospace concentration, so we are offering technical electives that you can take your final years. Your final year. Excuse me.

That you can take that will focus more on the aerospace side of engineering and with that you can use those tools to apply to aerospace type jobs. Like I said before, we have Lockheed Martin people. Lucky Martin hire students from here, Boeing, one of our ambassadors is now working for NASA. So a lot of great opportunities here at CSU.

Would major basically in mechanical engineering and then go into aerospace focus.

Yeah, if you guys have any questions, keep filling them out. Otherwise we'll move into research. So like goose mentioned, he could talk a little more about his research specifically, but if you are interested in research here as an engineer, that is totally great and very iaccessible like you can definitely do that so you have a couple of different pathways that you can choose as an engineer to get into research. If you are a Scott scholar like goose is, you could actually do something that's called sure.

Which is the Scott injure graduate research with this E stand for?

Experience, so what's really cool about that is that they actually will purposefully connect you and your interests to someone who needs an undergraduate to work in their research lab. Another one is hers, which is honors undergraduate research.

Scholar, I wish for the last letter, but if you're in the Honors College, that is also another way for you to get involved in research.

Otherwise, if you're like me and I just like being a normal mechanical engineer, you can do something that's just basically called emailing the professor so it's really cool. Is that actually got my job by looking at what professors had really cool research that I was interested in, and then I just emailed them and I said, hey, I'm really interested in your research. Can we choose a time to meet and talk about what you're looking at? You know more in depth and then if you're willing to, would you be willing to?

Hire me on as a part time research assistant, then a lot of these times they're not paid positions. Mine actually was.

Because I think I got lucky, especially as just a second year who didn't have any experience in that lab.

Lot of times you can join that lab as an undergrad, volunteer in it for awhile and then accept a paid position as you have been able to kind of show that you are willing to work hard in their lab and that you now know what they're really researching, 'cause what they're researching is very complex, and honestly, I cannot even begin to describe what I've heard. My friends are researching, 'cause I don't. It goes over my head, but the job that I was in the research stuff that I was in was in our advanced materials and Composites Laboratory.

So I got to work a lot with pre preg layups which basically you're working with resin and curing that resin and I'm working with carbon fiber thermoplastics and thermosets. Basically just analyzing all these new different types of materials that are really now just getting on the market. So that was really cool. Another great thing about research is that it tells you what you like and what you don't like.

The thought of materials still excites me, but being that lab I learned that it's really complicated and really material science itself is not for me. So that's something that actually learned from that lab, and then I'm not in it now because it wasn't really my interest. But what's really great about that is that I learned once again that that was not my Forte and then also it still looks really great on a resume. That's actually how I say I got an offer from Caterpillar to work as a summer intern there.

Was because they saw that I had this already hands-on in the lab experience working for someone else, and that's really all that jobs are looking for. That companies are looking for. Do you have anything to add about research goose?

OK, cool, so I guess real quick about that. You can do really any research that you want. Here at CSU it doesn't need to be engineering. Mine was really focused on mechanical engineering, but this semester before that I was actually going to take a research job in Biomedical Sciences so you can do it in any college that you want. Really, they just want they're just looking for hard workers who care about their research. That's really the main. The main deciding factor there.

Yeah.

Not that I do want to point out these two study spaces right here that we have.

It was.

Yeah.

In the quick little note on classrooms, so a lot, we get a lot of questions about how big are your class sizes and the answer is, it really depends on your class and your major, so we'll kind of outline what your curriculum will look like. Here is a mechanical engineer. Your first year you will take introduction to mechanical engineering and then basically science courses. Maybe a Gen Ed in their thrown in there. But other than that, science courses in your first English course.

So your science courses will probably be biology, chemistry, physics, and those are your pretty big courses. 'cause If you think about it.

Almost everyone at CSC was taking those courses, so with that you usually have lecture based which is 3D days a week for an hour, a recitation, which is one day a week, an hour and then lab which is 2 to three hours per week. And with that it really helps you learn the material in the presentation format from the expert professor and then you go to lab which applies those concepts with hands-on applications, which is really nice with the Tieran. Then you go to recitation with another TA.

Or learning assistant that can actually help you practice those concepts, whether that be with quizzes.

Sample problems other hands-on activities. Things like that and that really just helps cement that knowledge. From there you'll do. Kind of that your first year and then a little bit into your second year and then from there is when you really start. Start focusing on mechanical engineering fully. Your third year is usually the hardest year you junior year. You'll be taking materials, machine design, mechatronics.

Reduction to circuit switches are one electrical and computer engineering class. Then your 4th year will be senior design. Usually we'd like to see that your class sizes will dwindle as you get more advanced into your agree, and this is true. Your physics classes might be pretty huge, as you can see in these two lecture halls they host about what would you say, goose, 182 hundred students maybe?

Personally, I've never had a problem with this. My mom when I was looking at colleges, you know always told me Oh my gosh, like don't do large colleges. The classes are huge. I've never had an issue with it so I don't know why she's freaking out. But if you are worried about that, that's what office hours are for. That's what extra hours are for for you to really learn the material. An recitation and labs are usually 20 students, so you're going to be OK now we actually have a policy here in the Mech Department that classes are capped at 80 students.

Which I think is fabulous and I'm really excited to see how that looks once we get back on campus. But yeah, so essentially you have 80 students and then in your labs for mechanical engineering you probably have about 20 just to kind of rushed through that. 'cause we're getting short on time.

For those of you who did not attend the ER, ER, else, the residential learning community webinar, you can go onto our website or YouTube website. If goose, you could put that in the chat. That would be pretty awesome, but you can do that and you can look more about the details of that in that YouTube video, which we will post next week once we get it all filtered through. But essentially, this is where a lot of the engineers live here the first year, and that's really great. 'cause they get to live with other engineers as well.

For me in goose, that's actually where we lived. That's how we met. It's really nice because then you can, you know, literally click on our knock on your roommate or the person down the halls door. Who is the same age as you can go? Hey, this homework is doing 2 hours. How do I do? I don't understand and it's really nice. Wow, this is a choice for you to live in the residential learning community. You don't have to.

Either way, whether you live in this residential learning Hall or not, you can still access this basement, which is the 1st floor of the engineering residential learning community that all engineers have access to and it just has more computers and more study spaces.

I know I'm rushing through, but I want to give you guys time to ask questions. If you do have questions.

Um?

Yeah, so basically with the residential learning community in academic village AV, which is what we're showing here. You have suite style, while there is another residential learning community for engineers in Edwards, which is just right next to Engineering Hall, but is community style so sweet style you're living with one other roommate and you have a bathroom all to yourself community style you share it with the Hall, the bathroom that is not your roommate. So what's really cool about that? I don't know. Some people say it's more social, it really just depends on.

What you wanna do? But yeah, please throw questions in the chat. I know I rushed there I just really wanted to make sure that we got everything done. Do you have anything that you want to add? Goose consigning like? Kind of?

OK.

Yeah, if you guys have any questions like goosehead please please please email us write that email down in the chat. We are here for you to help you.

Answer any other questions that you have and also copy and paste that YouTube video because while they may not be posted yet, they will be posted soon.

Now we wish you guys luck with your college search process. We know that can be kind of a stressful time right now.

Yeah, thank you will let you all go.

Yeah, you're welcome Daniel. Alright have a good one everyone.

I.

Cool Red N dip.

Alright awesome, bye goose.