Career Prep
Each year, around 1,000 students graduate with a degree in engineering and join a global alumni base of 28,000+. Our graduates live and work in Tennessee and across the nation and the world. Many of our graduates have risen to top positions in industry, government, and academia. An engineering degree from UT offers an excellent foundation for a successful career.
Engineering Professional Practice
All students are strongly encouraged to pursue paid co-op and/or internship placements throughout their time at UT. Both pay well and both are an essential experience for advancing your academics and accelerating your job search, starting as early as sophomore year.
How Co-ops Work
As sophomores, students can begin to alternate full-time academic study terms at UT with full-time, paid work terms with industry or government. Typically, students will complete three co-op placements by graduation.
The benefits are countless—students overwhelmingly come back to class with a more mature, well-rounded understanding of technical concepts and the role engineers play in society.
In many instances, stipends for relocation and housing are provided in addition to competitive salary and benefits.
How Internships Work
Internships are typically shorter than co-op placements, but are still paid and provide exemplary experiences that will enhance your understanding of academic coursework and better prepare you for your chosen career.
Most companies recruit students for internship positions that take place during the summer between their junior and senior year. Like co-ops, internships through the Office of Engineering Professional Practice are paid positions.
Our Office of Engineering Professional Practice works with more than 200 employers actively recruiting our students each academic year. They will work one-on-one with you to find a company and paid position that matches your interests and major.
Learn more about Engineering Professional Practice
Jump Start Your
Future Career
The path to success has lots of different routes. For some, success is about joining a great team and building a product with an established company. For others, the route means starting something new and transforming invention into innovation. For those students who want to take the first steps toward leading new companies, launching startups, or looking to lead the teams that make innovation happen, the college has two programs specifically designed for you.
Engineering Entrepreneurship Program
The Engineering Entrepreneurship Program provides students with skills required to succeed in a technologically-based entrepreneurial endeavor including introduction to engineering entrepreneurs for mentoring, analysis of technology trends, fundamentals of intellectual property protection, ethics in business, practice in key communications skills, exposure to proposal writing, and the skills for the basic elements of starting a company.
Leadership in Engineering and Entrepreneurship Program
This cross-discipline program allows students to leave prepared for early career success as they take courses that focus on topics like emotional intelligence, communication, decision-making, conflict management, and team dynamics which will give you a jump-start on your future career.
Heath Integrated Business and Engineering Program
The Heath Integrated Business and Engineering program partners with the Haslam College of Business to pair an industry-focused curriculum with immersive, professional, co-curricular experiences to graduate leaders with a comprehensive approach to solving challenges.
Students who participate in the program can expect to learn the following skills while simultaneously working toward completing their major:
- The ability to seamlessly operate across business and engineering divisions, reducing silos
- An understanding of the framework for a successful company and the critical factors driving both engineering and business success
- Strategic and critical thinking skills that will add value for their employer from day one
- Communication skills that will allow them to lead others in implementing effective solutions and translate their vision across all levels of an organization
In short, graduates will understand the intersections between business and engineering, bringing depth and value to both fields from day one.
Senior Design
Senior design is the capstone experience for engineering students which provides Engineering Vols a comprehensive, team-oriented, design experience to apply their acquired knowledge and skills toward the solution of an actual problem faced by a community, agency, or corporation. Many of the projects allow TCE students the opportunity to work with industry partners on real-world projects that will help prepare our students for careers in engineering.
The college offers two options for students to participate in senior design projects.
- Departmental Senior Design
Students work on department-specific senior design projects which places them with teams made up of students from their own department working on a project specific to their major. - Integrated Engineering Design
Students work on a multidisciplinary team working a real-word industry project from sponsor companies.
