What First Year Electrical Engineering Students at Umass Amherst can Expect Academically

When I first started college as an Electrical Engineering student, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was an 18-year-old kid who no idea what I wanted to do, so I picked Electrical Engineering because it sounded cool, and I have always been interested in electronics. I decided to enroll at the University of Massachusetts Amherst because of their Engineering program and for the value. This article runs through the courses and what you should expect for the first year if you choose to attend the EE Program at Umass' College of Engineering.

Freshman Year

As a freshman, an EE student can expect to take two Calculus and two Physics courses. The Calculus courses cover derivatives and integrals that you will encounter daily in future engineering courses. Physics I covers basic kinetics, while Physics II has more application to EE. It covers Electromagnetism, basic circuits, etc. Freshmen will also take many general education courses to fulfill their general college requirements such as a college writing class. This is the year a student has the most freedom in what classes they wish to take. As for the engineering part of the course load, a freshman will take a digital logic course in the fall semester and an introductory programming course during the spring semester.

Digital Logic

When I first started the program, I had no idea what digital logic was. I felt way over my head. I learned however, that it is not so complicated. The course begins with a study of binary numbers, which is a number system that uses base 2. The decimal system uses base 10. Because binary is base 2, there are only two digits that one can use: 0 and 1. There are many reasons why digital logic uses this, but the most important is because 0 and 1 can represent on or off, true or false. We can take these 0s and 1s and put them into 'logic gates', which perform operations to them. To put it very simply, Digital logic and digital circuits involves running binary numbers through networks of these logic gates (wired into digital circuits). We put in an input, and receive an output. Very complicated systems of these are created into many of the technologies we use today, such as computers. The freshman digital logic course covers the basic material surrounding this material.

Programming The second semester engineering course is usually an introductory programming course such as C++ or Java. This class generally involves learning how to program from scratch. One who has never programmed before can expect to do a lot of typing and troubleshooting their programs. There are generally programming projects assigned every few weeks as well as paper exams where you have to write code on paper.