Dr. Bob White (left) and the Fall 2003 IME 416 class
that recently set a pass record for the professional state exam
Industrial engineering seniors have set a new record in terms of passing the professional national engineering exam administered by the State of Michigan. Of the 21 seniors who took Dr. Bob White’s IME 416 Operations Control class last fall, 18 recently passed the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering exam. This exam is prepared by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) and administered nationally.
White explained that the test is the first of a two-part professional engineering registration process required by the State of Michigan to become a registered professional engineer in Michigan. The second part of the exam is taken after the engineering graduates have had at least four years of field experience, and it tests their professional practice.
White has been teaching IME 416, which is offered only during the fall semester, since 1981. Students have been required to take the state exam since 1998. During that six-year time period, he said the class has “typically outperformed the national average,” but this year’s rate is the best so far.
The students’ 86 percent pass rate surpasses the 67 percent national average for students at all colleges. It is also better than the 74 percent pass rate of Doctoral I schools, which include the top-of-the-research-pyramid schools like Harvard and Yale. It is also well above the 50 percent average pass rate of colleges that are ranked in the Carnegie research doctoral-intensive schools, the group to which WMU belongs.
“We did much better than either the national average or the average of any of the groups that we compare ourselves to,” White said.
White is a full professor and a 31-year veteran of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, A Plainwell native, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at WMU and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Iowa State University.
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