Why Study Mechanical Engineering at SVSU?
Many prospective students and their parents ask this question. There is no single reason to pick SVSU. Our program is ABET accredited, which certifies that our students receive an education that meets national standards. All of our classes are taught by doctorate holding faculty who are experts in their field. The top priority of this faculty is teaching undergraduates, not research. Typical mechanical engineering classes are between 10-25 students, which allows professors and students to interact one on one and develop a true relationship. Our curriculum has a strong hands-on approach that helps students not only learn engineering theory, but gain experience in applying these concepts. Students have to opportunity to network with a wide variety of companies and industries.
National Ranking?
The SVSU Mechanical Engineering program does not appear on any national ranking report due to its size, not the quality of instruction. We measure our competitiveness verses other engineering programs in several ways. One measure of our students performance is through the Formula SAE race team. Our Formula SAE race team, which is entirely manned by our undergraduate students, designs and builds a race car every year. This car competes against 140 other teams from 11 different countries. In the last four years, we have placed 6th and 8th, higher than any other Michigan university. This is real world performance and achievement that matters. Additionally, many of our students have job offers prior to graduation.
Hands-on Engineering
Our concentration on hands-on education results in very experienced students. Many engineering courses have a laboratory associated with them. These labs are taught by the same doctoral holding faculty who teach lectures. Our labs contain state of the art equipment for students to learn on. ME students also gain experience designing, building, and testing devices throughout their career at SVSU. This builds the foundation for senior design projects and their future career. SVSU ME students also learn modern manufacturing techniques in metalcasting, machining, welding, and rapid prototyping/manufacturing.
A hallmark of SVSU engineering is our senior design projects. These projects are completed during the senior year, and take two semesters to complete. Students work with an outside company like Walboro, S.C. Johnson, Duro-Last, or Polaris to design a new product, custom testing apparatus, or improve manufacturing processes. SVSU ME students have designed a thermal cycling chamber for testing roofing materials, a new snow mobile chassis that is in production, developed a feeding machine for disabled children, and a gearbox for a racing application, to name a few examples. Because of these projects, students learn the necessary skills of project management, design, and communication, which are in demand by the world's top employers. More importantly, students finish their education learning the real world aspects of engineering a product from client demands to finished product. It is that experience that makes the SVSU difference and why we have more senior design projects than we can currently assign to students.
