Graduates go on to find positions as support engineers, mechanical design engineers, mechanical engineers and many others.

Engineering

Loras College offers a four-year Bachelor of Science degree in General Engineering, emphasizing the design and analysis of electromechanical systems.  The Loras Engineering program is a mixture of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, and it also entails some computer programming and controls engineering. The emphasis is on mechanical engineering. The interdisciplinary nature of the degree fits very well into a liberal arts college, whose goal it is to produce broadly-educated graduates.

The Loras Engineering degree is a unique four year engineering program that combines aspects of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science. Studying engineering at Loras is experience intensive and provides many outlets for hands-on learning through a variety of projects.   

Projects are team-based, open-ended and usually involve a research component, a design component, analysis and testing and a written and oral communications component. Examples of these projects include developing a electronically-controlled fan powered vehicle in the first year, participating in a model bridge competition in the second, studying thermodynamics and fluid mechanics in the third and completing the Senior Capstone Design Project in the fourth year. Past capstone projects include designing and building everything from an autonomous, drag-racing robots and an autonomous submarine to a web-controlled ball retrieval robot.  A recent project is the eWalk.  A three-wheeled electric personal transportation device that continues to appear at graduation ceremonies and various other campus activities. 

Students also play an instrumental role in faculty research projects involving such topics as energy and angular momentum partitioning in many-body quantum systems and photovoltaic module temperature on independent energy system performance. Internships are another emphasis of the program and are available in a range of areas, including custom forging, hydrostatic pumps and motors, GIS programming and others.

Graduates are prepared to design mechatronic, robotic, and “smart” products. This curriculum provides students with several possible paths of study:

• a major in general engineering
• an individualized major in engineering studies (recent examples have included engineering management, biomedical engineering and applied physics)
• a typical pre-engineering curriculum

Suggested Four-year Program of Study in Engineering