During timed trials, the rhythmic pounding of feet fills the air. Between events, students huddle, dissecting their team's performance and analyzing the competition. Snippets of English, Spanish and French waft through the foyer. It is a track meet, of sorts, but a very specialized one where the participants are not human. How competitions help Dr. Fred Smith, PE, mechanical engineering professor at Colorado State University, organizer of this year's decathlon, explained the value of competitions.
Engineering students learn a lot of fundamentals in a wide variety of fields.
One of the most essential aspects of their education is learning to synthesize all of that information into something that is useful, practical and applicable to real-world problems. They also emphasize communication and cooperation in a team setting, and give students a taste of the competitive pressures typical in the marketplace. Industry deadlines don't match our schedule of semesters and academic years, and industry deadlines also change. We've had some situations where suddenly our student projects get cancelled in the middle of a semester. On the other hand, the organizations running student competitions are typically professional societies that are chartered to support engineering education.