Introducing the Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering, a Student’s Perspective
“When I graduated high school and set my sights on attending Texas A&M, I told my classmates that I would be majoring in biomedical engineering to ultimately pursue a Ph.D. in it, address gaps in cancer diagnostic technologies and be a respected professor. But it was the empowerment that comes with designing a program of study, the careful balance of curricular flexibility and faculty oversight, and greater opportunities for entrepreneurship made available by way of a more flexible technical elective track that all led me to my major. I found double majoring would have delayed my graduation by a semester or two, until I realized that I could have them both in interdisciplinary engineering.”
After hearing about the department during an engineering seminar, Susie McCartt jumped at the opportunity to be part of the Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering (MTDE).
“An engineer is comfortable taking risks and choosing their own path,” McCartt said. “By choosing multidisciplinary engineering, you choose to create a program geared toward questions that don’t have answers.”
McCartt enjoys the flexibility of this individualized approach to education. By working closely with MTDE staff and faculty to create a degree plan that aligns with her interests, she can choose classes that are tailored to her passions or choose a preapproved track that is equally diverse.
Through MTDE, students are able to take courses in disciplines outside of engineering, such as education or architecture, to develop a personalized set of skills.
“The ability to integrate non-engineering courses into a degree plan builds on the concept that MTDE students are able to apply an engineer’s problem-solving ability to a number of projects that expand across the professional workforce,” McCartt said. “There is no limit to what an MTDE student can achieve.”