Is there engineering at Amherst College?
There are a few useful answers to this question. The most direct is:
there is no engineering program or major at Amherst College. There are engineering
courses in the Five College area; both Smith College and UMass Amherst have engineering schools.
However, very generally the Amherst College Registrar will not give Amherst College credit for courses taken at another institution if those
courses are not consistent with the curriculum of a liberal arts college. In particular, this means that
courses deemed to be pre-professional, e.g. courses in business, engineering, nursing, cannot be taken elsewhere for Amherst College
credit. However, there is a certain flexiblity of interpretation that makes this rule less restrictive than it sounds.
If an Amherst College academic department will certify to the Registrar that a comparable course could, at least in principle,
have been taught in that department, the Registrar will usually award credit for the course even if it's taught in
an engineering department. The content of a great many undergraduate engineering courses is similar to
that of science and math courses (although the emphasis and some of the techniques may differ), it is usually the case
that any given undergraduate engineering course can be certified by some related Amherst College academic department.
For example, fluid dynamics has (to my knowledge) never been taught in the physics department
at Amherst College but is regularly taught in the UMass
mechanical engineering department. However, since fluid dynamics could in principle be taught in the physics department, since it is physics
broadly construed, the Amherst College physics department will usually approve it for Amherst credit. On the other hand, the Introduction to
Engineering course taught in many UMass engineering departments will not be approved for Amherst College credit (the same it true for
most business courses). In all cases the final discretion whether to grant Amherst College credit lies with the Registrar.
The College does have some arrangements with other
institutions (although they are not advertised in the College literature) which
permit Amherst students to take a year away from Amherst College (akin to
a junior year abroad) to study engineering. For example, Amherst College
students can take their junior or senior year at Dartmouth College, graduate
from Amherst with an Amherst College BA, and then complete one more year at
Dartmouth College to obtain a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from
Dartmouth.
Dual degree program with Dartmouth College
Other useful links:
American Society for Engineering Education
This site has useful links both general and specific. For general questions
about what engineering is and who does it, choose engineering resources
on the navigator bar. The link
Engineering: your future is aimed at high school students considering
engineering, but is useful to anyone considering engineering as a
career.
Smith College's Picker Engineering Program website has some useful links and some information about how engineering can mesh with a liberal arts education.
IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Q&A
part of the student resources section is a particularly nice
resource.
The Society of Physics Students (SPS) has many resources aimed at the undergraduate physics student. It's not directly related to engineering, but there are many useful general resources. In addition, the Careers Using Physics section has profiles and advice from people with all levels of physics education who went on to do all manner of things, including obtaining a physics bachelors degree and moving into engineering.
Likewise, The Industrial Physicist is not engineering, but it focusses on areas of physics that have considerable overlap with engineering. In particular, the Profiles section provides profiles of physicists that work in many different fields.
Our library has a book, "Landing Your First Job: A Guide For Physics Students" that you may find helpful in job-hunting and career preparation.