Pre-Engineering Program

Dual-Degree Engineering Programs Available at Austin College

These programs offer students interested in engineering specific advantages compared to directly attending engineering school:

• Students have the opportunity to study at a small liberal arts college for the first three or four years of their college careers. In this intimate atmosphere, classes are much smaller than at most engineering schools. It is also significantly easier to become acquainted with your fellow students and to participate and take a leadership role in extra curricular activities.
• The faculty at Austin College recognize teaching as their first priorty and have much more time to devote to undergraduate students than at larger schools. Students at Austin College interact with their professors frequently, and have many opportunities to work directly with the faculty on research projects.
• The liberal arts college background provides students with a broad knowledge of the world in which they will be practicing the engineering profession. In a world in which environmental, economic, ethical and political factors affect the work that engineers do, this training is an increasingly important part of an engineer's education.
• Austin College and the Physics Department itself provides students with communication and writing skills in demand by engineering employers.
• Students still deciding on their future career who want to have engineering as a possible choice may attend Austin College and start the pre-engineering program with the knowledge that they have the option of staying at Austin College and majoring in one of the arts, the humanities, the sciences or in business. This gives students much greater career choice and flexibility than if they enroll immediately in engineering school.

Those students whose interest in engineering continues through the junior year and whose grades are high enough may then attend a major engineering school, where many industrial and high tech companies recruit their future employees. Often at these engineering schools, 3/2 students (those from liberal arts colleges) perform better on the average than those who started in engineering school their first year of college.

Dual Degree Program Descriptions:

• Washington University in St. Louis
• Columbia University
• University of Texas at Dallas
• Texas A&M University

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The Austin College pre-engineering advisor is

Don Salisbury