Are you interested in designing machinery systems, do you want to be an engineer, and are you looking for an alternative program to Mechanical Engineering? Then the Agricultural Engineering Option of the Biological Engineering (BE) major may be just the right choice for you!
An Alternative to Mechanical Engineering
Agricultural Engineering draws on mechanical engineering concepts for design and development of particular applications. The following examples illustrate this:
Example 1. Fluid Power
The Agricultural Engineering Option emphasizes design of fluid power systems for power transmission and motion control, for mobile equipment or food processing facilities.
Example 2. Power Generation and Transmission
The Agricultural Engineering Option emphasizes design of power generation and transmission systems for off-road equipment, food manufacturing, feed delivery, etc.
Example 3. Automation
The Agricultural Engineering Option introduces advanced machinery systems, such as robotics and machine vision, applied to agricultural crop production .
In addition, the BE major offers emphasis in the application of engineering to bio-based energy, natural resource protection, design of structures, food manufacturing, and biological production and processing.
Program Comparison
The Agricultural Engineering Option of BE and Mechanical Engineering require common courses that can be used for either program. Certain first and second year courses that are unique to Mechanical Engineering can still be used if a student switches to the Biological Engineering major, which has a great deal of flexibility in using credits from other engineering programs. This is illustrated in the two tables below:
First and second year courses that are common to both programs
| ENGL 15 - Composition & Rhetoric | ECON 102, 104 - Economic Principles |
| CHEM 110 - Chemical Principles I | First Year Seminar |
| MATH 140 - Calculus I | PHYS 211 - Mechanics |
| MATH 141 - Calculus II | PHYS 212 - Electricity and Magnetism |
| EDSGN 100 - Intro. to Engineering Design | MATH 231 - Calculus of Several Variables |
| ME 300 - Thermodynamics | MATH 251 - Differential Equations |
| E MCH 211 - Statics | E MCH 212 - Dynamics |
| E MCH 213 - Strength of Materials | CAS 100A/B - Effective Speech |
| General education requirements are the same, including GA, GS, GH, GHW | |
| Mechanical Engineering program courses that can be applied to the BE Major | |
| Course taken for ME: | Counts in BE as: |
| CHEM 112 - Chemical Principles II | Technical Elective or Basic Science |
| CMPSC 200 - Programming | Technical Elective (up to 6 credits) |
| MATH 220 - Matrices | Technical Elective or Basic Science |
| PHYS 214 - Waves and Quantum Physics | Technical Elective or Basic Science |
| BIOL 141 - Introductory Physiology | Ag/Biological Elective or Basic Science |
| Other ME courses | Engineering Science/Design (up to 6 credits) |
| With the Ag Engineering Option of the BE major, the Off-Road Equipment minor can be accomplished without taking extra credits if the student plans carefully with help from a BE advisor | |
