Undergrad Academics
Electrical and computer engineers enjoy flexibility in career options and many engineering careers turn toward management as they mature. NC State University is known worldwide for providing students with the knowledge and skills necessary in all aspects of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The average class size in ECE is 30. While the foundation courses can be much larger, problem sessions associated with these larger lecture courses, where students engage in hands-on learning, are broken down into smaller groups of students. Most ECE courses are offered 3 times a year to help students stay on track to graduation.
Hands-on Education
Students learn best by doing, so ECE has adopted the Analog Discovery unit throughout our curricula, aiming to accelerate and deepen learning, and have more fun.
The Analog Discovery 2 is a portable and full-featured toolbox that can measure, visualize, generate, record, and control both analog and digital signals. It packs enough punch that it can be used to study and design the vast majority of circuits and signals in our ECE program, augmenting hands-on experiences with traditional desktop workstations.
What’s Electrical Engineering?
Electrical engineers design many of the systems that we use every day, including the nation’s electrical power grid, computer systems, cell phones, communications satellites, biomedical devices, automatic control systems, robotics, nanotechnology, renewable energy, and much more. Our students use scientific and engineering principles to design new and better electronics, solve real-world challenges, and improve our quality of life.
What’s Computer Engineering?
Computer engineers design computers and computer-based systems, and their work impacts nearly every aspect of modern technology: the Internet, smartphones, video games, 3DTV, biomedical equipment, autonomous vehicles, WiFi and cellular networks, and much more. Computer engineers are, first and foremost problem solvers – they make computers work better, faster and more efficiently. Computer engineering is among the most lucrative fields in engineering, according to Forbes magazine.
Unlike electrical engineering or computer science, computer engineering primarily deals with how to build computer systems, hence there is more emphasis on hardware and low-level software that make up the systems. In contrast, computer science explores how to process information using computer systems, thus leading to a focus in software.