Electives
The purpose of technical electives is to broaden and/or deepen a student's knowledge of engineering and technology. Mechanical Engineering majors are required to take a total of 12 hours of technical electives. A wide variety of courses are appropriate to satisfy this requirement. Sometimes it may also be desirable for a student to select an elective course from a discipline outside of Mechanical Engineering.
The student's choice of elective classes must always be discussed with, and approved by, their advisor prior to enrollment. Technical electives should be chosen that provide the student with the foundation necessary to achieve a competitive advantage in attaining their career goals. Not all electives will be approved. Some restrictions are:
- Electives should only be taken during the senior year.
- Only three elective hours (one class) may be taken outside Mechanical Engineering.
- The student must have the required prerequisites and/or background for the course.
- Any course not shown in the listing below must first be approved by the advisor.
- An elective cannot usually be an alternate form of material already covered. For example, a second high-level programming language would not be acceptable. Nor would a first or second class in thermodynamics in another department be acceptable.
- Material that could reasonably be learned independently is ordinarily not suitable. Nor is material that is not directly related to a career in mechanical engineering, or that is vocational.
- The student may be able to take a graduate level class as a technical elective provided he/she has completed the Mechanical Engineering classes up to their junior year with a grade point average of 3.2 or better, and permission has been obtained from both their advisor and the instructor. A special form is available from the Registrar's office to enable the student to take graduate level classes.
Below is a list of some suitable technical electives. Other classes not listed below may be appropriate after consultation with your academic advisor and the undergraduate coordinator.
Students may select Technical Elective Tracks resulting in a certificate of specialization.
Technical Electives (.pdf format)
| updated listing 06/03/11 | |
|---|---|
| Mechanical Engineering * | Civil Engineering * |
| • EMA 4225 Mechanical Metallurgy | CES 3100 Structural Analysis |
| • EMA 4501 Optical and Electron Microscopy | CES 4101 Advanced Structural Analysis |
| • EML 4161 Cryogenics | ENV 4001 Environmental Engineering |
| • EML 4288 Vehicle Design | ENV 4341 Solid and Hazardous Waste Management |
| • EML 4312 Design and Analysis of Control Systems | TTE 4201 Traffic Engineering |
| • EML 4316 Advanced Design and Analysis of Control Systems | TTE 4250 Traffic Operations |
| • EML 4421 Fundamentals of Propulsion Systems | |
| • EML 4450 Energy Conversion Systems for Sustainability | Electrical Engineering * |
| • EML 4452 Sustainable Power Generation | EEL 3216 Fundamentals of Power Systems |
| • EML 4512 Thermal-Fluid Design | EEL 3705 Digital Logic Design |
| • EML 4535C Computer Aided Design (CAD) | EEL 3472 Electromagnetic Fields I |
| • EML 4536 Design using FEM (Finite Element Method) | EEL 4220 Electromechanical Dynamics |
| • EML 4542 Materials Selection and Design | EEL 4746 Microprocessor-Based System Design |
| • EML 4711 Introduction to Gas Dynamics | |
| • EML 4800 Introduction to Robotics | Industrial Engineering * |
| • EML 4840 Introduction to Mobile Robotics | EGN 3443 Statistical Topics in Engineering |
| • EML 4930 Special Topics in ME | EIN 4333 Design of Integrated Production Systems and Facilities Layout |
| Computer Science * | EIN 4395/ 4261 Manufacturing Systems Engineering |
| FAMU - COP 3502 Fundamentals of Programming | EIN 4611 Industrial Automation and Robotics |
| FSU - CGS 3460 Fortran for Non-specialists | Mathematics * |
| FSU - COP 3014 Programming I | MAA 3402/4402 Complex Variables |
| MAD 3401 Introductory Numerical Analysis | |
| Physics * | MAD 3703 Numerical Analysis I |
| PHY 3101 Intermediate Modern Physics | FSU - MAP 4341 Elementary Partial Differential Equations |
| PHY 3424 Optics | MAS 3103/3105 Applied Linear Algebra (3/4 cr) |
| FSU - STA 3032 Applied Statistics for Engineers and Scientists (3 cr) | |
| FAMU - STA 3034 Mathematical Statistics | |
| * student must complete all required prerequisites | |
Student may elect to use three (3) of the six (6) required credits of EML4970, Honors Work, towards fulfilling the Technical Elective requirement - see Honors Work course request form (.pdf format)
If you take a course outside of mechanical engineering, please give some feedback about how useful it is to you to your advisor. That will allow us to keep the list of approved courses up to date.
