UCI Engineering Grads Much in Demand

IRVINE — Here in Southern California’s technology hub, students with newly minted degrees in engineering or computer science are walking out of class and right into the lab.

What a change.

Just five years ago, students who could write computer software and design electrical and mechanical wonders hunted for jobs in a forest of recession, where the region’s aerospace and other technology-oriented companies were laying off workers by the hundreds.

Now the jobs are hunting them.

With the healthy Southern California economy and surging interest in the Internet and information technology, just about everyone graduating now is finding jobs--sometimes months ahead of commencement, campus and corporate officials say.

Jason Castillo, 24, a UC Irvine civil engineer hired this year at Fluor Daniel Inc., chose the university for his graduate studies because of its proximity to an emerging job market in technology. The story isn’t the same back at Cal State Fresno, where he earned his bachelor’s degree.

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“In the Central Valley, the economy is not nearly as strong for engineering as Southern California,” said Castillo, who will work as a design engineer at the company, which designs petrochemical plants. In Fresno, “I have friends who graduated when I did and they are still looking for jobs.”

The local job market for all graduates is the best in recent years, with the UCI job placement center recording a 41% increase over five years ago in the number of companies recruiting on campus. About half of those companies are technology- or science-related.

“It’s probably the best year for tech students in the last five years,” said Bruce Riesenberg, director of UC Irvine’s job placement center. “The restructuring and downsizing that has taken place in both the aerospace and the computer industry has ended and they are now rebuilding.”

Michael Heiberg, 22, a computer science graduate, turned a love of programming games into a job at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine. Before landing the position, he fielded calls at least twice a week from job recruiters.

“I wasn’t searching a whole lot because I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted,” said Heiberg.

The paychecks are bigger too.

Average starting salaries for engineers and computer scientists are about $42,000, up from $30,000 five years ago, Riesenberg said, a sign of the high demand. At the information and computer science department, the largest in the UC system and among the largest in the country, every one of about 140 graduates has found work, with many of them landing jobs as early as last November, said chairman Michael J. Pazzani.

About 80% of those jobs were in Orange County, where a a mini-Silicon Valley is taking root in the Irvine area.

“We are not at all meeting demand,” said Pazzani, noting that nationwide employment prognosticators say academia isn’t turning out engineers and computer scientists fast enough for the explosive industry.

Computer and electrical opportunities rank among the hottest for engineers, but prospects are bright for just about all specialties. To keep up with demand, the university a few years ago made computer engineering a separate program from electrical engineering. Its enrollment has jumped from just a few students at the start to more than 60 now, said Allen Stubberud, chairman of electrical and computer engineering and acting dean of the School of Engineering.

Gerardo Gallegos, president of the UCI chapter of an electrical engineering organization, knows well how good it is. He had little trouble landing a job as a design engineer with Fluor Daniel in Irvine and talked to a number of other companies.

“We’re pretty much a hot commodity out there,” he said.

Long-term prospects seem healthy.

“Employers are telling us these trends will continue,” said Patrick Scheetz, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. “Computers, automation, networks, robotics are here to stay.”

At Printronix, a small Irvine company that designs and manufactures a range of computer printers, officials said that in the past few years they focused recruiting efforts on UCI because of its proximity and its increasing regard for the engineering and computer science programs. This year, the company hired four graduates and plans to recruit several more in the years to come.

Even mainstays of the defense and aerospace industries report a surge in entry-level hiring, the result of their changing interests in the absence of large defense contracts. As a result, companies such as Hughes Corp. increasingly are looking for engineers to design telecommunications software instead of torpedoes.

“There certainly is a contrast between what we had in the early ‘90s as compared to right now,” said John Wilhite, who heads Hughes’ college recruitment program.

“In the early ‘90s students were looking for jobs and now what we are beginning to see is many of the students are being sought out for jobs,” Wilhite said. “Some students are not participating in the recruitment process because they have received so many contacts. Computer science majors can sit at their computer and be hired.”

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Now the question is: Can educators keep up with demand?

The UCI computer science department received 1,200 applications for the program, double that of three years ago, Pazzani said. About 773 undergraduates were enrolled, a 26% increase from three years ago.

Computer engineering will enroll 120 freshman in the fall, but Stubberud said it could have accepted 50% more had the university not imposed an enrollment cap to keep costs down.

“I think the School of Engineering could double in size in five to 10 years, no problem, in terms of demand,” said Stubberud. “It is a matter of resources.”

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Tech Triumph

The number of companies visiting UCI to interview graduates from the school’s technical disciplines has increased 45% since 1992. Companies interviewing engineering, computer engineering and computer science graduates:

1992: 80

1997: 116

Source: UC Irvine