System Engineering Initiative (SEI)

      Hi people!! Back again.. Eventually we attended a talk organized by our lecturer for the benefit of the students, other lecturer and few bodies like OSHA were present too. To deliver the message was Dr. Kurwitz from Texas A&M University which is one of the most oldest universities in Texas. He started of his speech by saying that back in Texas it is 41 degree Celsius. And we are very thankful to the almighty that we are still under our own body temperature.
    Well lets hit on our topic. Basically SEI is a program designed specially for students. Students who are very much interested in industrial life. Back in the US, the percentage of students graduating from the Engineering field is only ~55%. Therefore to increase this, the quality on the student output, this special program was designed.
     SEI, brings students of freshman, sophomore, Junior or Senior to work with the Industrial Graduates, Project Manager and so on. The reason they are doing this is because Engineering is more interesting when we do it, while studying. At the same time,  the company can identify few capable individuals who are very keen to working environment and that might be their future working place too.
   There are a lot of benefit gained by in many prospect. What the related company will do is they will assign student to do some research on how things work in a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). For example there were studies on how to safe space on the spent fuel pool so that there are more spent fuel can be placed in. These are done by the students with the guidance of the upper management. At the same time student get paid off for their hours off working. Of course it will be less but its something, and this also benefits the company by getting a cheaper research and development from the students. Therefore student also gain benefit from here, they gain knowledge and they get to work on real working field.
     This also will increase the interest of the student in Engineering field, and therefore there will be more undergraduates on Engineering Field. This eventually gives work to the the student (of course if he is productive and willing to give an output). With this program there are certain rate of increase in CGPA for the students in US.
     In the end of the presentation, a few question were popped out to Dr. Kurwitz. We did not lose this chance of questioning him about the YUCCA MOUNTAIN plan to place the high level disposal. And few other question were also put out.
    Our view of attending this talk. The knowledge that we gained is, if Malaysia is to have a NPP by 2021, this implementation could take place. The growth in Engineering field and the interest will raise high. Therefore Malaysia will produce good Engineers who can compete in idea wise and work wise in future. Being an Engineering students, we truly feel that if given an opportunity, we would gain valuable knowledge from this kind of program and use it for the benefit of others in years to come. We also hope that Malaysia will take a program like this, not relating it to the internship, and see the idea out of us. For we are ever ready willing to spurt out our idea and our skills, anytime, for our country.

   
MK, T3, L-MAN