This file contains information for new graduate students in the Mechanical Speciality within the Engineering Division.

All of our Mechanical Speciality graduate students, and all of the Engineering Systems graduate students, are required to take EGGN 501 (Measurement Systems), EGGN 502 (Modeling and Simulation), and EGGN 504 (Graduate Seminar). These courses are typically offered in the Fall Semester and entering graduate students are encouraged to take these courses as soon as they can. Waiting may result in your date of graduation being put off, since they are offered only once a year.

Most graduate students consider these courses to be a full load since both 501 and 502 are four hour courses. The seminar is only one hour. So the combined total is nine hours. However, some students decide to take an additional elective course, but these students are generally not acting as TAs (teaching assistances) or RA (research assistances), and therefore have additional time to devote to studying for courses.

The current CSM Bulletin (http://www.mines.edu/publications/bulletin/bulletin2007/2007-2008_graduate.pdf) has a list of the accepted mechanical elective courses (see page 72). Thesis students will chose nine hours from this list, non-thesis mechanical speciality students will select 15 hours from this list. Both can then select an additional six hours of "other technical" electives (basically 400 level and above technical courses).

If you plan to do a thesis, then you should select a thesis advisor (from among the Mechanical faculty) as soon as possible. If you are non-thesis option, then you can still choose someone other than me, if you like, but by default, I remain your advisor throughout your program.

If you have other questions then feel free to contact me and I'll try to answer them as best and as quickly as I can.

-js