Excellent Preparation
Whether your goal is employment or advanced professional training, Alma College’s Pre-Engineering program provides excellent academic preparation in traditional and new engineering fields:
- Aeronautical engineering
- Computer-integrated manufacturing
- Electrical engineering
- Electro optics
- Mechanical engineering
Alma offers several programs for pre-engineers:
- Computer Science major
- Mathematics major
- Physics major
- Electronics minor
- Study options
Dual-Degree (3-2) Program: You may study three years at Alma and then transfer to an engineering college to complete training in two additional years. At the end of five years, you will have earned two degrees: a Bachelor of Science degree from Alma College and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from the engineering college. Alma maintains formal 3-2 agreements with the University of Michigan and Michigan Technological University, Informal arrangements may be made with other engineering colleges.
Bachelor’s-Master’s (4-2) Program: You may study four years at Alma, earning a Bachelor of Science degree and then enter an engineering graduate program to complete a master’s degree in the field of your choice. Alma graduates have completed graduate engineering programs at Arizona, Colorado, Duke, Illinois, Michigan, The Ohio State, Purdue, Stanford and Wisconsin universities. Many receive fellowships for graduate study.
You don’t need tomake an immediate choice of either program or profession. Explore your interests by taking a variety of courses in the sciences and the humanities. It is usually sufficient to make a decision by the midpoint of your junior year.
Faculty-Student Research
From the freshman year on, laboratory work is an important component of Alma’s science courses and accompanies most physics and chemistry courses.
Your professors are on hand to help you apply your classroom learning to laboratory situations. Laboratory sections are kept small.
Facilities
The electronics laboratory, in the Dow Science Center, has analog and digital electronics, microprocessor programming and interfacing, and robotics. The optics laboratory is equipped for a variety of experiments in electro optics, including holography.
The Dow Science Center offers laboratories in physics, electronics, optics, nuclear science, biology, microbiology, physiology, astronomy and geology. A well-equipped planetarium also is available. Students working on projects are assigned individual space to use at any time, including evenings and weekends.
The Kapp Science Laboratory Center provides a state-of-the-art facility in the supportive areas of biochemistry and chemistry.
The campus-wide network links more than 600 microcomputers, terminals and printers. For students with their own computers, residence halls offer in-room access to the campus computer network with no user fee.
Career Possibilities
Graduates of Alma’s Pre-Engineering program benefit from our high placement rate. Ninety-six percent of Alma graduates entered graduate or professional schools or found employment in their fields within six months of graduation.
Our pre-engineering alumni have completed programs at such fine engineering graduate schools as the University of Michigan, University of Illinois and Duke University.
About half of our Pre-Engineering Program graduates complete the 4-2 or 3-2 options. The other half enter the work force immediately, most often in computer-related engineering positions; of these, about half return to school within a few years to begin engineering graduate work, often with company sponsorship.
Click here for a one-page information sheet (PDF).
