Vicki Zerr

Cal Poly is known in the industry for highly technical "Hands-on" engineers. Some of the Engineers I work with in Development like to leave the actual troubleshooting to the Test Engineers. As a Development Engineer, you gain more respect from your team members and greater knowledge of your system if you are not afraid to do the actual "manual" labor in engineering, such as troubleshooting Hardware and Software problems. The familiarity with the lab environment is what makes a good development engineer. Theory is one thing, but in practice no design ever tests without hardware and software problems. To correct a design you must know how to find, quantify, and eventually fix it. I have worked with many very good Engineers from highly accredited schools and I believe a lot of their designs would have had less rework if they would have began by prototyping in the lab environment. In other words, if they had more practical involvement with their projects. Cal Poly's "Learn by doing" approach would help other College grads to improve their product.

I know when I look at resumes I do check the school they graduate from. All schools have slightly different reputations. Cal Poly's reputation opens the door for the interview process.