Weld Engineer BS?

[wagin]

I have recently notice multiple employment ads from companies wanting to hire a weld engineer. The education requirements required included a 4 year BS degree in weld Engineering. Does anyone know what and where this degree can be achieved?

[obewan]

I have recently notice multiple employment ads from companies wanting to hire a weld engineer. The education requirements required included a 4 year BS degree in weld Engineering. Does anyone know what and where this degree can be achieved?

LeTourneau University in Longview, TX, Ohio State University, Ferris State University, and several others with a Metallurgy variant but strong welding curriculum like Colorado School of Mines, Penn State University, RPI, etc... Also, many if not most employers will also accept a Welding Engineering Technology Degree for welding engineer positions. It does make a difference for some government positions I know. I have a BSWET, and have always held a welding engineer position. Currently I am a Senior Welding Engineer at GE.

[Supe]

Add The Pennsylvania College of Technology to that list as well.


Out of all of them, Ohio State has the only ABET accredited 4 year degree out of all of them, which really only matters if you're trying to sit for the PE exam one day.

[obewan]

deleted

[obewan]

Add The Pennsylvania College of Technology to that list as well.


Out of all of them, Ohio State has the only ABET accredited 4 year degree out of all of them, which really only matters if you're trying to sit for the PE exam one day.

LeTourneau got their ABET accreditation several years ago. Even when I went, people used to sit for their EIT and eventually PE exams. I think it actually depends on the state. I know PE's who graduated from LeTourneau before ABET. And, for the EIT exam, in the 1980's, they had a 97% pass rate, which was better than most of the major state universities. They even had the vast majority of technology majors passing the EIT exam until the test board threw a hissy fit and said the path of lesser resistance people were not worthy to take the lofty exam.

http://www.letu.edu/opencms/opencms/_Academics/accreditation.html

[wagin]

LeTourneau University in Longview, TX, Ohio State University, Ferris State University, and several others with a Metallurgy variant but strong welding curriculum like Colorado School of Mines, Penn State University, RPI, etc... Also, many if not most employers will also accept a Welding Engineering Technology Degree for welding engineer positions. It does make a difference for some government positions I know. I have a BSWET, and have always held a welding engineer position. Currently I am a Senior Welding Engineer at GE.
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[wagin]

LeTourneau University in Longview, TX, Ohio State University, Ferris State University, and several others with a Metallurgy variant but strong welding curriculum like Colorado School of Mines, Penn State University, RPI, etc... Also, many if not most employers will also accept a Welding Engineering Technology Degree for welding engineer positions. It does make a difference for some government positions I know. I have a BSWET, and have always held a welding engineer position. Currently I am a Senior Welding Engineer at GE.

thank you Obewan,
I have an associates in Mechanical Engineering Technology and a 90 hour vocational diploma in welding-fab-blueprinting. Due to plant closing I will soon be in a position to further my education. Based on your experience, can you recommend a direction that will qualify me for a weld engineering position?

[obewan]

thank you Obewan,
I have an associates in Mechanical Engineering Technology and a 90 hour vocational diploma in welding-fab-blueprinting. Due to plant closing I will soon be in a position to further my education. Based on your experience, can you recommend a direction that will qualify me for a weld engineering position?

Since you already have the AS, most of your credits would transfer to a BS Weld Eng Tech. It would take you about 2 years to get a BS Weld Eng Tech. You would need mostly welding and electrical courses. A BS Weld Eng would be a higher degree and perhaps better long term, but would take you about 3 years. You should check into LeTourneau University or Ferris State University in Michigan or some of the Penn State College/Universities is you want a BS Weld Eng Tech. There are also non-degreed welding engineers who got there by work experience writing weld procedures but they are rare since most employers want one of the two BS degrees.

[Supe]

LeTourneau got their ABET accreditation several years ago. Even when I went, people used to sit for their EIT and eventually PE exams. I think it actually depends on the state. I know PE's who graduated from LeTourneau before ABET. And, for the EIT exam, in the 1980's, they had a 97% pass rate, which was better than most of the major state universities. They even had the vast majority of technology majors passing the EIT exam until the test board threw a hissy fit and said the path of lesser resistance people were not worthy to take the lofty exam.

http://www.letu.edu/opencms/opencms/_Academics/accreditation.html


I excluded LeTourneau, as it's no longer a welding program, but falls under "materials joining." They go into plastics, ceramics, etc, and have deviated significantly from the welding emphasis and hands-on approach they had many years ago, though they still cover much of the theoretical aspects of it.

[wagin]

thank you Obewan,
I have an associates in Mechanical Engineering Technology and a 90 hour vocational diploma in welding-fab-blueprinting. Due to plant closing I will soon be in a position to further my education. Based on your experience, can you recommend a direction that will qualify me for a weld engineering position?

Just review my thread and need to add a correction. the vocational diploma I hold is for completion of a 900 hour welding program, I missed an 0.

[Supe]

With that much vocational time to transfer, I'd look at the Penn College or Ferris State program. Neither program gets carried away with math and science (you can still expect to take physics, metallurgy, statics, strength of materials (dynamics), etc), and at least at Penn College, there is a large quantity of "continuing education" students, i.e. people who have come out of the work force to go back to school. The school is small enough where even the dean will know you on a first name basis. Many of the instructors have their masters or doctorate degrees, while still coming out of the power industry, companies like Aker Kavaerner, etc. The instructors and dean have more say than a few admins sitting in the admissions office, and are really more concerned with getting you out of there with a degree, than making you sit through more classes to make a few more tuition bucks. Job placement in that program has been 100% for several years now. I don't believe Ferris State is much different. If you want an engineering school where you will spend your time calculating weld strength, phase transformations, and looking through metallographs to determine root cause analysis based on grain boundary appearances, then the bulk of those schools mentioned are for you. I've been that route before (former Buckeye), and the jobs are not only harder to come by, but the education is the equivalent to watching paint dry, and you're probably lucky to get a handful of credit hours to transfer (several of those schools won't accept their OWN credits after X number of years have passed.)

The job you'll get will depend largely on what they're looking for. When HR puts "Welding Engineer" in the job title, that can be taken a million different ways. They may want a metallurgy specialist, they may want someone with a Welding Engineering P.E. license, or they may want someone well versed in various codes, weld tracking, procedure qualification, etc with some metallurgy and process background to go with it. I fall into the latter category, have a B.S. from Penn College in "Welding Engineering and Fabrication Technology," and my employer (a huge EPC company) is in love with me. Granted, I put more effort into my education and expressed a genuine interest in it outside of the classroom to a much greater extent than most of my peers, and that's more or less what landed me the job I have today.

If you're in the construction trades, they love having someone with the practical experience/understanding of the processes at hand, rather than design theory. Same goes for manufacturing facilities that deal with machinery, ag equipment, etc. You get into aerospace, component manufacturers, etc, they look more for metallurgists who know their way around welding, not vice-versa.

[obewan]

I might add that the Ferris State program has a heavy emphasis on automotive resistance welding - perhaps too much. Most of the companies that recruit there are automotive concerns, and many of the grads end up working as welding technicians in the auto industry. The auto industry has a heavy emphasis on electrical and PLC control work. The resistance process is acutally easy to learn and quite boring as far as welding engineering work goes. I spent 8 years as an automotive welding person, and got laid off 3 times. I went to aerospace as a senior welding engineer and doubled my salary. I think the Penn programs would better position a person for work in the nuclear or aerospace industry. LeTourneau used to have a heavy recruitment emphasis in the oil industry, but then, they are in Texas.

[Supe]

I might add that the Ferris State program has a heavy emphasis on automotive resistance welding - perhaps too much. Most of the companies that recruit there are automotive concerns, and many of the grads end up working as welding technicians in the auto industry. The auto industry has a heavy emphasis on electrical and PLC control work. The resistance process is acutally easy to learn and quite boring as far as welding engineering work goes. I spent 8 years as an automotive welding person, and got laid off 3 times. I went to aerospace as a senior welding engineer and doubled my salary. I think the Penn programs would better position a person for work in the nuclear or aerospace industry. LeTourneau used to have a heavy recruitment emphasis in the oil industry, but then, they are in Texas.

LeTourneau has sadly lost a lot of their hands-on emphasis they had many years ago. Before my boss picked me up for my current position, they had a grad from there in my role. Great design guy, knew a lot about theory, but was completely lost when it came to any practical application or implementation.

Good point on the automotive front. I know a few Penn College grads who went into the automotive industry, mostly through Toyota or Harley, but that was based primarily on the fact that Penn College students gain experience with Motoman and Fanuc robotics. Needless to say, not a whole lot of jobs rolling through on the automotive front these days.

Penn College definitely has been placing emphasis on the power industry. They've done a pretty good job of picking up on industry trends, and that reflects in the curriculum and classroom. The program definitely has some deficiencies (blueprint reading being one of them, and too much emphasis on AWS code over ASME), but not many other schools give students experience to weld up mock headers, etc. They get a LOT of feedback from former students, and are able to keep up with the trends and wants/needs of industry accordingly.

I hate to sound like I'm tooting their horn, but I spent a lot of time and effort researching and deliberating where I wanted to go when I left Ohio State. I can't emphasize just how impressed I was with Penn College, from the facilities, to the helpfulness and "down to earth-ness" of the faculty, to the recommendations and contacts they had. It was one of the smartest moves I ever made.

[sn0border88]

I dont have much to add, only that im in my first year at Penn College right now and everything Supe has to say is spot on. From what ive researched, and been told by staff/former students it sounds like someone who graduates from this program will have the world at their feet if they put the effort in.

Theres a few career fairs here every year and even though im 3 years from graduation every employer I talked to wouldnt let me leave unless I took their information with me. Unless

[pulser]

I would like to encourage wagin to go on in school and get a BS in welding engineering, or welding technology, or metallurgical engineering, or even mechanical engineering. It will pay off in the long run, and the long run is probably only a few years. You can specialize in welding with a degree in any of these fields.

Best of luck, go for it.

[Supe]

I would like to encourage wagin to go on in school and get a BS in welding engineering, or welding technology, or metallurgical engineering, or even mechanical engineering. It will pay off in the long run, and the long run is probably only a few years. You can specialize in welding with a degree in any of these fields.

Best of luck, go for it.

Couldn't agree more with that statement right there.

[wesdavidson]

Weber State in Ogden Utah has a good program, it is the follow-on to the one that was deleted at Utah State University a few years ago. the curriculum, personel and equipment from USU was moved to Weber. USU students used to beat out Ohio students quite often on getting hired.

Ohio was theory only, no welding.

Weber state will take transfer students, they offer 2 year or 4 year degrees. if it hasn't changed recently, You would certify in tig, mig, stick, gas, subarc, plasma arc, airarc, oxyfuel, electroslag welding and a few more. They are a miller training site, so they have everything in the miller catalog, plus beta test items on site and usable. You would take, depending on what you already have, welding, metalurgy, robotics, NDT, boiler code, ship code, structural code, corrosion engineering, electronics, chemistry, math, english, some buisiness classes, engineering statics, and dynamics.

USU grads used to also get underwater welding, x-ray NDT certification, laser welding, electron beam, and a few others, depending on what equipment was on site.
They would usually get offers $5,000 to $20,000 dollars higher than civil or mechanical engineering graduates from the same school. They were trained to be able to to work between the engineering departments and the shop floors. Understand the engineers, and educate them about weld processes and standards, and weld on the shop floor to demonstrate, test and quallify proceedures and welders. typical position, 200 engineers, 2000 men on the shop floor, 1 USU grad in between. They also could desighn custom proceedures and equipment and custom design filler metals to match base metals needs.

The work to be a good welding engineer is far in excess of what it would take to pass the PE tests. The reason the boards didn't like welders was that they themselves probably didn't understand the work behind the sparks and smoke, - and a good welding engineer costs a LOT more to train and hire than a run of the mill mechanical or civil engineer. .
A good experienced welder, who has read and understands the codes, the metals and machineries handbooks, and standard books knows more engineering than the adverage engineering graduate.

[Vrroom]

Wagin,

Like Obewan, I am a Senior Welding Engineer .... at GE. I went to The Ohio State University where I got my BSWE. I'm a hands on engineer, but I know all the theory too. OSU WE's have the 2nd highest starting engineering salaries (at OSU) and also enjoy 100% placement at graduation. It's not the easiest program in the world but it does get you noticed when you're applying for jobs.

When I tell someone I'm a welding engineer, the first word out of their mouth is "Did you go to Ohio State?" ....... I'm always proud to answer "Yes, I did".

The program is not for everyone, but if you make it through, you'll never regret having done it.

Vrroom

[obewan]

Wagin,
. OSU WE's have the 2nd highest starting engineering salaries (at OSU) and also enjoy 100% placement at graduation. Vrroom

Gee, LeTourneau only had 97% placement when I went there. OSU is the way to go if a person is thinking about a graduate WE degree, although I know some LeTourneau grads who earned OSU Phd's.