Have you hugged an engineer lately?

I’m sure the summer break will fly by faster than the drone my son Gideon has been maneuvering. Gideon recently received his bachelor’s degree in mechatronics engineering and – after a short breather – will plunge into the graduate program in engineering management. My wife and I are proud of his achievement, especially since our involvement grew to be more about food, lodging and grant applications and less about homework assistance.

Yes, his oppressive courses in calculus, linear algebra and statistics were soon “above our pay grade.” Sure, I was probably the fourth-best math student in my high school class; but since college, my skills have atrophied to the point that I require a cheat sheet just to sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Since grade school – even before he discovered reruns of “My Three Sons” (featuring Fred MacMurray as widowed aeronautics engineer Steven Douglas) – Gideon has unswervingly declared engineering to be his future.

And I must admit that the goal has made a dandy conversational icebreaker. People either make corny jokes about cabooses or blurt out, “What in the world is mechatronics?” Well, an article from Spiceworks.com describes mechatronics as “an interdisciplinary career path where technical professionals combine their mechanical engineering and electronics knowledge to design and develop new products, systems and hardware.

” Mechatronics engineers participate in all stages of product development, from concep.