In engineering today, you already know demand far outstrips supply, so the degree will get you the job. But simply having an engineering degree won’t get you selected as an astronaut for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as Jemison was. And it won’t land you as president and chief operating officer at Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Information & Services Sector, as Johnson is.

While the career paths for engineers are boundless, Jemison and Johnson will tell you that you still must position yourself to go for it.

There is no road map or easy answers in the career game, said Jemison, who also earned a doctorate in medicine from Cornell University Medical College and today runs the Houston-based Jemison Group Inc., an advanced technology company, and serves as the national science literacy advocate for Bayer Corp. The way to advance your career in engineering and technical fields is "to put yourself up front" and not fear rejection, she said. That means attending career fairs and meeting people and their companies. And it means selling yourself and communicating effectively, she said.

"So many times people think there’s a nice road map. There’s isn’t. I would love to say that NASA came and found me and that I was really wonderful and they heard how great I was," Jemison said. "I called down to Johnson Space Center, risked being called an idiot and asked is there an astronaut selection program. A lot of times it’s much more simple than we imagine, but there’s no single road map."

Often, graduates will hold back seeking opportunities, thinking they need someone else’s permission first, Jemison added. "It’s not like that," she said. "You have to design and decide where you want to go and project yourself there and be willing to be turned down."

When he left Morehouse, Arthur Johnson (left) took a job with IBM’s Federal Systems Division as a programmer trainee, then moved progressively up the IBM advancement ladder. Working in a number of technical, software systems and business management positions, Johnson ascended to the post of president and chief operating officer of IBM Federal Systems leading to his current position in the Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin organization. During his career, Johnson has served as executive assistant to IBM’s chairman and graduated from the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies Seminar XXI Program.

Coming out as an undergraduate engineer, Johnson said he had no schematic of where his career was heading, just that it involved computer engineering. "It wasn’t any grand vision or anything like that. I was a guy coming out of college looking for a job, quite frankly," he said. "I had developed an interest in solving problems, in the sense of things that intrigued me. It was really more of an inquisitiveness on my part, liking to look at complex things and figuring them out."

Change and innovation are synonymous with engineering professions, Johnson said, and those who succeed will be on the upside of that. "For people who want to be successful, for people who are looking to get ahead and make a contribution, there is an element of flexibility, adaptability that you must have," Johnson said. "You have to be flexible in terms of your expectations and flexible in terms of your willingness to take on new and challenging things."

For the engineering graduate or recent graduate, these are the best of times. Amid a robust United States and worldwide economy, engineers have never been more in demand. Salaries and benefits are increasing, and so is the control the engineer has over his or her career.

A study from the American Electronics Association (AEA) found that the number of U.S. students earning associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics and physics actually declined by 5 percent between 1990 and 1996, despite growing demand for workers in these fields. For instance, the study found that the unemployment rate for electrical engineers is 2.1 percent and only 1.3 percent for computer engineers.

"The opportunities when engineering students get out of college are there to the point where they can do almost anything they want to do," observed Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., a civil engineer and dean of the College of Engineering, Architecture and Computer Sciences at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Employers, meantime, are pulling out all the stops to get top engineers into their organizations, starting with increasing salaries, benefits and other perks. Employer campus visits, interviews with students, job postings, and resume requests were up in 1999 over 1998, according to responses in a poll of the career services practitioners by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) of Bethlehem, PA., which offers career information through its Internet site at www.jobweb.org. Engineering and computer science students are the most sought graduates, even ahead of business and financial fields such as accounting and business administration. High technology companies seeking next-generation engineers are the most visible on campus, the study said.

"Clearly, these students can afford to be selective," said Camille Luckenbaugh, NACE employment information manager. "They have a wide variety of positions to choose from, including various engineering and computer-related jobs, along with sales, accounting, management, and consulting opportunities."

Average starting salaries in April 1999 for most of the engineering disciplines are increasing, according to NACE. Computer engineering bachelor’s graduates are getting average offers to start with companies of $46,190 in April 1999, a 5.3 percent increase over the average starting salary in September 1998. Chemical engineering graduates’ average offers rose 5.8 percent since September 1998 to $47,705, while electrical engineering graduates saw their average starting salaries rise 3.5 percent over the same timeframe to $44,803. In the petroleum industry, the average for chemical engineers rose even more to $50,273. The average starting offer for civil engineering graduates, who typically work as design engineers, has reached $36,030, a 2 percent increase since September.

The vigorous engineering job market is having a number of effects, particularly among African-American and minority graduates. One is that as job offers become more attractive, fewer students are opting to go to graduate school. "What’s happening is obviously the C+ student is getting offers today that only the B+ students used to get," Dean Johnson of Howard said. "That’s good for the students, but it’s also having a secondary effect. The A student that would normally go to graduate school now is tempted by high salaries, which may include bonuses and relocation costs."

For the African-American engineering graduate, the pressure is even greater to take that job since the talent pool for Blacks is smaller than 10 years ago and shrinking. Largely, after considerable efforts to attract minorities to engineering and science in the 1970s, the pool of African Americans in the field is steadily being whittled down, Dean Johnson said. About 500,000 minorities graduate annually from U.S. high schools and 30,000 of them are on an engineering track, he said. About 15 percent of them actually go into engineering, but of that number only a third come out with engineering degrees.

Dr. George Campbell Jr., (left) president and chief executive officer of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME), a New York-based non-profit corporation dedicated to increasing access to careers in science-based disciplines for African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, is worried about the overall effect the lack of minority engineers entering the field will have. While Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians constitute 30 percent of college age population, they receive only but 10 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering and 3 percent of doctorates, according to Campbell.

"People who are coming out of school have tremendous opportunities, perhaps greater opportunities than ever existed before. If they come out with good credentials, there will be no difficulty at all finding decent jobs," Campbell, a physicist, said. "But having found a job, we haven’t created a revolution in terms of ethnic consciousness in this country. Wherever (minority engineers) go they will find themselves in a much smaller minority than they are in the society at large. There are still very few African Americans in position of leadership in the technical workforce."

Ivy Alderson, a December 1997 mechanical engineering graduate at Tennessee State University, landed on her feet after school as a manufacturing engineer at The Boeing Co. in her hometown of St. Louis. She works as a liaison between engineers designing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to the production floor.

Her first year at Boeing has been an education unto itself for Alderson, but not so much for learning engineering on the job, but learning the manufacturing and production process. The biggest difference between school and work, Alderson admitted, is the money.

"When you’re in school you just concentrate mostly on your books and just try to make good grades. When you’re in the workforce you have to make sure you do a good job and really have to take care of yourself. You have to worry about doing all the little things that your parents took care of when you were in college," she said.

Alderson, who said she someday wants to operate her own mechanical engineering firm, understands, too, that if she does a good job at Boeing she will be rewarded early in her career. Already she is planning to use Boeing incentives that will help her earn an advanced degree.

Years ago, companies, who hire engineers, would have frowned on employees wanting to leave to establish their own enterprises after taking advantage of perks. But Johnson of Lockheed Martin said that is no longer the case, particularly as firms desperately seek top talent. "Employees today have taken a much firmer grasp on their careers than they have in the past. They are proactively involved in the direction of their careers, much more so than they were 15 or 20 years ago. Companies like Lockheed Martin are working very hard to differentiate ourselves to make our company a place where people want to come and work," he said.

No matter what direction graduating engineers go, Dr. Jemison (left) advises them to maintain the inquisitiveness for solving problems. That ultimately will lead to your success.

"What engineering provides is really a good way of looking at the world and framing information. It allows you to figure out how to think through problems, thinking through applications and solving problems. That was an important part of an engineering degree for me," Jemison said.