Career Opportunities
With the world's thirst for energy continuing to grow, there is now an urgent demand for a well trained workforce to develop, process, utilize and manage conventional, unconventional, and renewable energy sources in an environmentally safe and economically feasible way. Therefore, graduates of the Energy Engineering program will have many diverse options that include the opportunity to:
- Become valuable contributors in addressing society's energy needs and demands, successful leaders in advancing the technology and management of energy, innovators and entrepreneurs in the energy sector.
- Join the workforce or continue on for advanced degrees in various areas of energy science, engineering, and business/management.
- Enter private or public sectors as Energy Engineers to evaluate and recommend energy generation, production and processing methods and strategies.
- Address critical energy management issues of various process industries especially extraction, production and conversion industries; design engineering systems to address energy production, processing and utilization.
- Contribute in designing/ developing novel catalytic/biological/chemical processes and/or maintaining upstream technologies for petroleum and natural gas processing industries or unconventional fuels such as coal to liquids or oil shale/ tar sands processing industries.
- Join automobile manufacturing industries to work in traditional internal combustion engines or develop novel fuel cell based vehicles.
- Join major power companies in designing/maintaining/developing environmentally sound renewable power systems such as wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal or coal, oil, or gas based power generation systems.
Internship Opportunities
Students enrolled in energy engineering have the opportunity to participate in the DOE Technical Careers Internship Program. The Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy initiated this internship program to recruit highly qualified students from the nation's top earth sciences and engineering universities for internships in fossil energy programs. This program provides employment for students once they graduate and a "pipeline" of employees for DOE's Office of Fossil Energy.
ABET Accreditation
This program will seek accreditation as a General Engineering Program by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET in the near future. It is not currently accredited.