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07.09
To P.E. or
not to P.E.?
By Steven
F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E.
In the late 1990s, I, like many
mid-career engineers, pondered whether I should
go through the process of becoming a licensed
professional engineer (P.E.). The entire process
was a bit of a mystery. After a satisfying and
successful career as a commissioned officer in
the United States Air Force, I was beginning to
make plans for active duty "retirement" and a
second academic career. At the time, I was
serving as a faculty member in the Department of
Electrical Engineering at the United States Air
Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs.
It was a wonderful and
fulfilling job, but approaching the 20-year
point in my military career, I had the yearning
to try new challenges. As I began to consider a
second career, my top choice was to start a
second educational career teaching electrical
and computer engineering at a civilian
university. I also hoped to serve as an
engineering department head. I had judiciously
studied the faculty want ads in the back of
IEEE Spectrum and noted that some of the
department head and dean positions required
licensing as a registered professional engineer.
I had also hoped to serve as a consulting
engineer as an off-duty avocation. I really
enjoyed working tough embedded system design
problems, and thought I would enjoy doing this
type of work for others. I understood that to
provide consulting services also required an
engineering license.
Coincidentally (actually
serendipitously), John Steadman, Ph.D., P.E.,
was serving as a distinguished visiting
professor in our department. As you may know,
John has served the engineering community with
distinction for many years in many high-level
positions, including president of the National Council
of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)
in 1993-1994
and IEEE-USA president in 2004. John and I discussed the
registration process on several occasions. I had
also mentioned to my parents that I was
considering becoming a registered engineer. My
mother quickly quipped, "Any professional worth
their salt is registered!" You have to
understand that my mother has been a registered
nurse for more than 50 years, and proudly served
as a commissioned Navy flight nurse during the
Korean Conflict.
As I investigated the
registration process, I realized I would first
have to complete the
Fundamentals of Engineering
(FE) examination. John suggested I check with
other faculty members in the department to see
if they might be also interested in pursuing
registration. There were seven fellow faculty
members potentially interested. John met with us
and explained that the FE was an eight-hour
examination, divided into two parts, offered
twice a year, typically in late October and late
March.
As its name implies, the FE
examination tests the fundamentals of
engineering in two different parts: a
120-question, four-hour morning session and a
60-question, four-hour afternoon session. All
are multiple-choice style questions. The morning
session covers the areas of basic science,
mathematics, engineering, economics and ethics.
The afternoon session is discipline specific and
covers all of the primary subject areas within a
given discipline. The NCEES actually provides a
detailed specification of the examination on
their Web site [www.ncees.org].
At that initial planning session, we agreed to
meet for one hour a week for the year. At each
meeting, one of our study group members would
present a review session on a specific topic and
also work through representative problems
provided in NCEES study materials, as well as
those provided by other publishers. The NCEES
also provides a
reference handbook containing
key equations and information helpful during the
exam.
At our first meeting, John also
suggested we contact our state registration
office to obtain application materials. Although
the FE examination is written, published and
coordinated at the national level by NCEES, it
is under the jurisdiction and legislation of
each individual state and territory. We found
out that the application process requires
attention to detail and time to arrange for the
forwarding of official transcripts from
universities we had attended.
The group effort worked well
because we felt we owed it to each other to keep
at it. All eight of us successfully passed the
FE exam. John hosted a barbeque for us after the
exam, and we immediately began making plans to
tackle the Professional Engineering examination,
since we all had at least the requisite four
years of practical engineering experience. We
used the same study tactics as we did for the FE
exam to great success — all of us passed the PE
examination. With the eight of us successfully
completing the exam, the electrical engineering
department at USAFA probably had the highest
percentage of registered engineers for a
department at that time — approximately 70
percent.
The PE examination is also an
eight-hour examination. The entire examination
is discipline specific. Beginning in Spring
2009, the format of the exam assumed a new
structure. Instead of consisting of a
40-question “breadth” exam in electrical and
computer engineering in the morning part of the
eight-hour exam, followed by one of three
40-question “depth” exams, examinees will select
one of three 80-question exams. The exam choices
are:
For more information on the exam
format change, check out
Aaron Collins' December 2008 Today's Engineer
article, “Sample Exam Books
Available for Restructured PE Exam.”
For the P.E. examination, you
are allowed to bring your own reference
material. I carefully chose a key textbook from
each of the different areas covered by the exam
and also an engineering mathematics textbook.
As I began looking for a
civilian faculty position, I proudly listed
"Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E." at the top of
my resume. I accepted a faculty position at the
University of Wyoming. As I look back and wonder
whether the P.E. was worth the effort, I would
respond with a resounding "yes." This became
evident as UW prepared for our ABET
accreditation visit several years back. I found
out that ABET was interested in how many
registered professional engineers were in our
department. Aside from my faculty position, I
also perform consulting work designing embedded
control systems that control entry point devices
for various industrial applications. I could not
have done this work without my license. I have
also been asked to serve as an expert witness in
a court of law. I had to politely decline since
the testimony was beyond my area of technical
expertise. I still hope to serve as a department
head some day. My P.E. license will allow me to
pursue positions in any locale.
It is interesting to note that I
originally obtained my P.E. license in Colorado
and was registered in that state. Upon accepting
the teaching position in Wyoming, I applied for
licensing in that state via a procedure called
comity, which allows engineers to obtain registration
in other jurisdictions by completing the
registration process in other states. States'
requirements vary, but having licensure in one
state, and by
establishing an NCEES record, the acceptance
in multiple jurisdictions can be greatly
simplified. I
currently maintain active registration in
Colorado and Wyoming because of the consulting
work I perform.
On a side note, several years
ago, I was asked to submit questions to the
NCEES for use on the P.E. examination. I found
this offer intriguing. As a result of submitting
questions, I was asked to serve on the NCEES
committee that writes and edits the P.E.
examination. I have now served on this committee
for several years. I consider it a great honor
and I hope to work on this committee for many
years to come.
The committee consists of
approximately 20 registered professional
engineers from industry and academia. We
represent the different technical specialties
within electrical and computer engineering. What
we all have in common is a deep commitment and
respect for our discipline and the registration
process. We consider it a great honor, and also
a great responsibility to construct the P.E.
examinations that will be taken by our fellow
engineers.
We originate some of the
questions and edit those that are provided by
other volunteers. Rest assured that each
examination and each examination question is
thoroughly reviewed by a number of dedicated
professionals before it becomes part of an exam.
Furthermore, each examination is subjected to a
battery of post-exam statistical analyses by an
external audit agency to insure each examination
question measures up under the scrutiny of
impartial experts.
If you, too, are considering "To
P.E. or not to P.E.," I would highly recommend
investing the time. My only regret is that I
waited until midway through my career to obtain
my license. I forgot to mention, mom was quite
pleased that I, too, was now a registered and
licensed professional!
To learn more about licensure
and registration, see:
Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D.,
P.E., is an associate professor of electrical
and computer engineering at the University of
Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, and a member of
IEEE-USA’s Licensure and Registration Committee.
Comments on this article may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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