Career Opportunities

Career Opportunities

Engineering Physics (EP) is a relatively small discipline within the academic fields of engineering. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) list 31 accredited EP programs around the country (note that some schools use the program name Engineering Science, ES). This may be contrasted with Mechanical Engineering with 276 accredited programs or Civil Engineering with 222. It is similar in size to Biomedical Engineering which has 33 accredited programs.

The Fort Lewis College EP program is new, with only two graduates to date. Upon graduation one took a job at the IBM Almaden Research Center and the other is working locally as a Water Resource Engineer.

Nationally, EP graduates find the dual emphasis on fundamentals and engineering applications to be extremely valuable for wide-ranging careers in industry, government, academia, and professional practice in law, medicine, and business administration. At programs around the country about half of the B.S. degree graduates take positions in high-technology industries or engineering consulting, at starting salaries at the top end of the salary scale for engineers. The other half of the graduates continue on to either graduate school or to professional programs in engineering, law, medicine, and business administration. Most engineering physics graduates develop careers in industry as staff engineers or scientists or technical directors; in research and administrative positions in nonprofit and national laboratories; as professors in almost all engineering and scientific disciplines at major universities; as consultants; or as physicians or lawyers.

Below are sample employment statistics from the University of California at Berkeley career center for EP/ES graduates.

Recent Employers
Employer			Title
Andersen Consulting LLP			Business Analyst
Boeing			Scientist/Engineer
Computer Access Technology Corp			Software Design Engineer
ELS Architecture			Office Administrator
General Electric			Edison Engineer
Glacier Bay Inc			Electronic Controls Engineer
Gray/I.C.E. Builders			Project Engineer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory			Test Engineer
Monetary Authority of Singapore			Trainee Officer
N&K Technology			Application Engineer
National Semiconductor Corp			Circuit Design Engineer
National Writing Project			Program Specialist
Santa Clara Valley Water District			Assistant Engineer
Towers Perrin			Actuarial Associate
Salaries
Year	Reported	75th Percentile	Average	25th Percentile	Median
2001	3	--	--	--	--
2002	2	--	--	--	--
2003	5	$50,000	$40,600	$38,000	$45,000
2004	2	--	--	--	--
Total	12	$53,650	$48,118	$45,000	$50,000
Graduate Schools
Field			Degree	School
Agricultural Economics			PhD	University of California-Berkeley
Applied Physics			PhD	Columbia University in the City of New York
				University of California-Berkeley
Biomedical Engineering			PhD	University of California-Berkeley
Civil Engineering			PhD	Carnegie Mellon University
Electrical Engineering			MEng	University of California-Los Angeles
			PhD	University of California-San Diego
				University of California-Santa Barbara
Engineering Physics			PhD	University of California-Berkeley
Environmental/Sanitary Engineering			MEng	University of California-Berkeley
Management Science			MBA	Stanford University
Mechanical Engineering			MEng	University of California-Berkeley
			PhD	University of California-Berkeley
Operations Research			PhD	Northwestern University
Optics			PhD	University of Rochester
Physics			PhD	Princeton University
				Stanford University