Four steps.

Eight years.

Two exams.

It all adds up to what Ben O’Neal, engineering professor, calls two “pretty exhausting” eight-hour exams.

After four years of undergraduate coursework, engineering students encounter additional education and practice for another four years before acquiring a professional engineer license.

A professional engineer is an engineer certified by a state board of registration to practice engineering. It is significant for an engineer to acquire the professional engineer license because many engineering jobs require it and professional engineers typically acquire significantly more money than unprofessional engineers.

“Being a professional engineer has always been an important distinction and enhances one’s career options,” according to College of Engineering’s Student Central.

“Though you may never need to be registered for ‘legal’ reasons, many companies require engineers to have their PE to be eligible for engineering management positions.”

The first step in receiving a professional engineer license is to graduate from an ABET accredited program, which is the recognized United States accreditor of college and university programs in applied science, engineering, computing and technology.

Before transferring into any department in the College of Engineering, students must first complete the matriculation classes, along with E101, introduction to engineering and problem solving, and E115, introduction to computing environments.

Both E101 and E115 introduce the College of Engineering as a discipline and profession.

Once the courses are completed, students must comply with the GPA requirement of the particular department in which they are looking to transfer, where they will work toward their degree.

“It definitely gets harder; I mean it really starts getting pretty tough your junior year and end of sophomore year, because you’re getting more specific classes and they’re more in depth, not as broad,” Rodney Bass, a senior in civil engineering, said.

The next step is the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which covers a comprehensive range of subjects in engineering. The FE contains a total of 180 multiple choice questions within two four-hour exam administration sessions.

“You can’t become a professional engineer unless you take the FE exam,” O’Neal said. “After you take it, you get a certificate saying you are an ‘Engineer in Training,’ and it’s also a nice credential to have when you are interviewing, having passed the exam.”

According to David Parish, undergraduate coordinator for advising, students should take the FE exam their senior year, as well as a preparatory class.

“You don’t have to take that course, but it’s a good way to prepare,” said O’Neal, who teaches the course to roughly between 200 and 260 students every semester.

According to O’Neal, there is also an FE review manual that students can study to prepare for the exam. The E490 preparatory class covers all subjects on the FE exam and is a 10-week course by itself.

“That’s a good class to take because it’s pretty hard to prepare for [the FE exam] and take your classes, even though what you’re dong in class is going to be on it,” Brett Grant, a senior in civil engineering, said. “The morning session is harder because it’s on all types of engineering.”

O’Neal said there are advantages to taking E490 because it gives students the opportunity to learn how to work problems on the exam they wouldn’t otherwise be able to work.

“[Preparation] increases probability of him passing the exam,” he said. “Students report that taking the course allows them to work many problems on the exam that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to work on the exam, and it’s a significant number of problems.”

After engineering students pass the FE exam, they must continue responsible practice within their field of engineering for four years.

“The idea of the four years of internship is so you’ve learned a lot of the things that you apply from your field in practice,” Parish said. The final step in becoming a professional engineer is to take the professional engineering exam, which is open-book and lasts a total of eight hours.

The PE exam covers the aspects of the person’s specific field and practice in engineering, whereas the FE exam covers theory. “All the professional engineers that I know and work with have told me that the PE is easier than the FE exam,” Bass said.

Parish said the best way for students to prepare for the PE exam is to take a review course.

“A review course is probably the most helpful way if you haven’t done a lot of academic work in a long time,” he said.

The Civil PE exam will have an additional module, or type, of engineering, starting with the spring 2008 exam.

In 2001, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying started to discuss the possibilities of adding a construction module to the Civil PE exam.

This satisfies the need to acknowledge construction engineering in the professional engineering licensure.

“The construction engineering module provides additional flexibility for those individuals who have specialized in construction engineering,” said David Johnston, chair of the Construction Engineering Committee and professor in the civil, construction and environmental engineering department. According to an article released June 14 on the NCEES Web site, it is important that the construction engineer process is enforced for professional engineers. Construction engineering is needed to design various production and safety systems.

“The field of construction engineering is large enough to justify the new exam module,” Johnston said in the article. “It’s appropriate for it to be one of the choices in the Civil PE exam because at least a quarter of graduating civil engineering students choose careers in construction.”

The NCEES also recommends an additional 30 hours of graduate-level coursework prior to taking the PE exam. However, North Carolina has yet to vote on the requirement.

After the four steps of engineering education, engineering practice, exam preparation and two “exhausting” exams, the person may now finally earn their license as a professional engineer from the state Licensing Board.

According to Johnston, the professional engineering license makes a big difference in a person’s career, and engineering students said they agree.

“It’s a very important job to have because if an engineer messes up, thousands of people can die,” Grant said.

“Whenever you become a professional engineer, you have the power to say ‘this bridge is OK to build’ and then thousands of people will cross it and depend on it.”

Bass said it is important for an engineering student to work hard in the engineering program to attain the license as a professional engineer.

“I definitely think [engineering’s] harder than most majors out there, especially at State,” he said. “It is definitely something you have to put your work into to get what you need out of it. You can’t get through it without giving a crap.”