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10.09

It’s Never Too Late to Become a Professional Engineer: My Unconventional Path to Licensure
By Dave Cotton, P.E.

My path to licensure was not the path dictated by most engineers or engineering societies. When I graduated with an electrical engineering degree from the University of Connecticut in 1983, I was preparing for a career as an officer in the United States Air Force, so licensure was the farthest thing from my mind. I enjoyed my eight and a half years of service in the Air Force, including service in Desert Storm, but by 1992 I felt it was time to leave the Air Force. Soon afterward, I entered the wireless industry as a radio frequency (RF) engineer.

I enjoyed my 15 years of RF engineering in the wireless industry, but as the wireless industry made the change from a fast-growing industry to one of slower and steadier growth, rates that many RF engineers enjoyed in the 1990s were being cut — in some cases in half. I realized I needed to begin to differentiate myself from the pack and years of experience were clearly not enough. In 2000, I started to investigate licensure. I had met two engineers from the wireless industry who had obtained licensure. The first P.E. I encountered was Mark Taylor, who currently works for Qualcomm. He was the team lead on a project I was working on in 1996 in the Denver area to optimize the new Sprint CDMA network there. The second P.E. I met was Ron Graiff, a long established professional engineer who was called to frequent zoning meetings in the Tri-State area around New York City. Both men encouraged me to pursue licensure at the time, when I did not know many radio frequency engineers who were licensed. In addition, they, as professionals, set an example for me to move forward toward licensure.

I decided late in 2001 to move forward with obtaining my P.E. license, but I changed jobs and got sidetracked. I re-initiated the process in late 2003. I was working in Wyoming at the time and I investigated several licensure routes. I was going to take the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam and the Principals and Practice of Engineering (commonly referred to as the PE) exam at the same time. However, while researching the licensure rules for Wyoming, I realized I could get the FE exam waived if I had over 20 years of experience as an engineer.

I received the FE waiver in 2004 from the Wyoming licensing board to take the PE exam without the FE exam, so I started to study for the exam. I could have taken the exam in October 2004, but I felt I wasn’t ready, so I fixed my focus on taking the April 2005 exam. I dug up old texts, bought some study guides, which helped me greatly as I didn’t have a study group or class I could work with in rural Wyoming. I worked on problems I hadn’t seen since college and brought in the practical experience I had gained. I took the exam and found out I passed in June 2005 — at the age of 43. However, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the license.

Soon after, my wife and I moved to Utah and I wanted to be licensed in Utah. However, Utah initially rejected my application since I had not taken the FE exam. After being a little upset about this dilemma, I decide to go ahead and take the FE exam in Utah. Even though it was February, I still had time to apply and study for the April 2006 exam. I found the FE exam a bit more challenging than the PE exam because it covered subject matter I hadn’t seen in more than 20 years. I passed the exam and received my Utah P.E. license in June 2006. However, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the license until more than a year later.

In late fall 2007, I found a job that required my RF engineering background and a P.E. license. In my present position as director of RF compliance for Sitesafe in Arlington, Virginia, I am able to work from home in Colorado, providing me with a great deal of flexibility and responsibility. Because I had taken both the FE and PE exams, I found I was eligible for Model Law Engineering status when I applied for my NCEES record. This greatly facilitated my ability to get licensed in other states and even opened the door to licensure in Canada, which I am pursuing in the province of Saskatchewan. It also gave me the confidence to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Colorado in telecommunications. The master’s degree also helped me earn continuing education credits, a requirement for professional engineers registered in different states.

Was getting licensed worth it?  Absolutely! It might not appear to most electrical engineers (outside of the power industry) that getting licensed is worth the time and effort required, but licensure opens doors, especially if one wishes to become a private consultant. One can offer services to the public as an engineer and can legally use “Engineer” and its variant in a company name. Above all that, it reinforces the profession of engineering.

Dave Cotton, P.E., is an IEEE member and director of radio frequency compliance for Sitesafe in Arlington, Virginia.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.