I infiltrated Cookeville today

[Links2k]

In Cookeville for the state championship game today. We lost to Ensworth. My family and I enjoyed our brief stay and although we only stopped at a few places, we encountered some of the friendliest people in the world which prompted my sons famous remarks that "everywhere is better than Memphis". He can't wait to leave and attend college in Arizona or Colorado.

I hope that I can come back when I have more time to experience the area. Good job!

[Chucktshoes]

[quote name='LINKS2K' timestamp='1354254908' post='852741']my sons famous remarks that "everywhere is better than Memphis". [/quote]

You got a smart boy there.

[Links2k]

[quote name='Chucktshoes' timestamp='1354255486' post='852743']


You got a smart boy there.
[/quote]

Thanks. I know that your were taking about his quote, but he really Is special. I can't wait to see what kind of man that he becomes. Edited November 30, 2012 by LINKS2K

[Erik88]

I like that area of the plateau from cookville down to crossville. And yes, once you get outside the big cities most Tennesseans are great people.

[peejman]

If he liked Cookeville, why not go to school there? It's a great school, typically near the top of the "bang for your buck" lists (not that I'm biased or anything).

[10-Ring]

Yep, TTU alumni here, Cookeville is a great little town I enjoyed the time that I spent there and probably would have stayed in Cookeville after I graduated had there been more job opportunity. But, if you son thinks that anywhere is better than Memphis then he needs to visit Detroit, or in my opinion most of Arkansas.

[laktrash]

Worked there for 10 years, great place, great people !
Watching the games on TV thinking how much I missed the place

[Links2k]

[quote name='peejman' timestamp='1354278207' post='852774']
If he liked Cookeville, why not go to school there? It's a great school, typically near the top of the "bang for your buck" lists (not that I'm biased or anything).
[/quote]

We are looking for a good engineering program and he prefers to go out west

[RobertNashville]

I don't know if I'll have have good feelings about Cookville...I seem to recall that the police like to shoot family pet dogs at erroneous traffic stops.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

My daughter graduated from TTU and only time I recall being in Cookeville was last spring for the graduation. Dunno if they have a "good" engineering program but they sure were handing out lots of engineering diplomas.

There are all sorts of students, each capable of thriving in different environments. I went for a few years to a "fairly prestigious" engineering school that didn't fit me very well. Cold and impersonal except the senior year or graduate level. Instructors were either grad students who were lecturing because they "had to" while working on the much more important dissertation. Or profs who were lecturing because they "had to" while working on their much more important research. IOW, there wasn't a whole lot of teaching going on, and the student that was happiest and most successful would be the one fairly self-contained, independent, and ambitious. Who didn't mind being just one of anonymous thousands going thru the motions.

I may be mistaken, but get the impression that some of the smaller institutions put less emphasis on professor's publish-or-perish concerns, and more emphasis on teaching. Which might better fit some personality types of students.

[peejman]

[quote name='LINKS2K' timestamp='1354286681' post='852817']
We are looking for a good engineering program and he prefers to go out west
[/quote]

BSME & MSME here. They have an excellent engineering program. Other than perhaps Vanderbilt, best in the state IMO. What kind of engineering?

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1354290032' post='852839']
I don't know if I'll have have good feelings about Cookville...I seem to recall that the police like to shoot family pet dogs at erroneous traffic stops.
[/quote]


Yep, that happens daily.

[MacGyver]

If you want a great engineering program in Tennessee, check out Lipscomb University. Small class sizes. Professors who care and are there because they want to be. Plenty of areas for undergraduate involvement - both in research and their awesome engineering missions program. 100% pass rate of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam 6 years in a row (quietly the best record in the state).

[MacGyver]

I know plenty of big school trained engineers who look down their noses at Tennessee Tech engineers until they work alongside them. They have a great program.

[peejman]

[quote name='MacGyver' timestamp='1354290720' post='852844']
If you want a great engineering program in Tennessee, check out Lipscomb University. Small class sizes. Professors who care and are there because they want to be. Plenty of areas for undergraduate involvement - both in research and their awesome engineering missions program. 100% pass rate of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam 6 years in a row (quietly the best record in the state).
[/quote]

Forgot about them, but agreed. A friend is teaching there now. We went to school together and worked together for a while before he decided to go back for his PhD. Thankfully, I already know how to work a post hole digger.


[quote name='MacGyver' timestamp='1354290903' post='852845']
I know plenty of big school trained engineers who look down their noses at Tennessee Tech engineers until they work alongside them. They have a great program.
[/quote]

Yes. Bigger schools are very much a double edged sword. Some have excellent opportunities to learn and do a lot of neat stuff. It's also easy to slide through and learn/do very little.

I currently work with several UT grads who know their stuff. In the past, I've worked with a few who didn't know the difference between stress and strain.

[10-Ring]

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1354290032' post='852839']
I don't know if I'll have have good feelings about Cookville...I seem to recall that the police like to shoot family pet dogs at erroneous traffic stops.
[/quote]

I know the officer in question professionally and have had dealings with him several times. I'm not sure what happened that night with the dog but Officer Hall (I believe that he is a detective now) is absolutely a stand up guy. Perhaps he made a split second bad decision but my dealings with him have been nothing but top notch.

[MacGyver]

[quote name='peejman' timestamp='1354291976' post='852853']
Forgot about them, but agreed. A friend is teaching there now. We went to school together and worked together for a while before he decided to go back for his PhD. Thankfully, I already know how to work a post hole digger.
[/quote]

They've put together a great faculty. There's a lot of benefit to being small.

I got my first engineering job based on one phone call. While I had no way of appreciating that fully at 21 years old, I later found out the my boss's boss had also gotten his first job based on a phone call from the same professor. There was no interview process, instead it was "that was the first phone call I've gotten from him in 10 years. If he says you're a good fit for us, then I figure I need to listen."

Full disclosure: I'm on the board for the engineering school and am an occasional faculty member in their graduate program. If anyone's kids are thinking about Lipscomb, make sure to let me know and I'll make sure they meet the people they need to meet.

[RobertNashville]

[quote name='10-Ring' timestamp='1354295158' post='852875']I know the officer in question professionally and have had dealings with him several times. I'm not sure what happened that night with the dog but Officer Hall (I believe that he is a detective now) is absolutely a stand up guy. Perhaps he made a split second bad decision but my dealings with him have been nothing but top notch.[/quote]
Obviously I don't know the officer personally or professionally and of course, I wasn't there but that whole incident seemed to be an example of what not do to at a traffic stop from stopping a car that wasn't involved in a crime in the first place to the amount of force used on the gentlemen (for which I believe the state trooper was found to have used excessive force and fined) to the killing of the six month old family dog.

As an animal lover in general and a dog lover in particular, it's just hard for me to overlook it whether the officer acted properly or not - I guess we all have our blind spots.

All of which, of course, has nothing to do with the thread so I apologize to the OP for injecting myself in it!

Edited November 30, 2012 by RobertNashville

[87toy]

[quote name='LINKS2K' timestamp='1354254908' post='852741']
In Cookeville for the state championship game today.
[/quote]


So you were part of the parking problem yesterday and today! Every year when we host the championship the entire campus is a wreck due to a large amount of the campus sectioned off for football parking. The only way we can park in the normal parking lot is to pay.

As others have said, ttu has a great engr. program. If you ever need anyone to show you around and maybe give a behind the scenes tour, pm me. We could even hit the range after!

[87toy]

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1354290032' post='852839']
I don't know if I'll have have good feelings about Cookville...I seem to recall that the police like to shoot family pet dogs at erroneous traffic stops.
[/quote]

An officer wrongly shoots a dog so you have bad feelings towards the whole city?

Is that a joke?

[peejman]

[quote name='87toy' timestamp='1354297812' post='852893']
So you were part of the parking problem yesterday and today! Every year when we host the championship the entire campus is a wreck due to a large amount of the campus sectioned off for football parking. The only way we can park in the normal parking lot is to pay.

[/quote]

Heh, I remember those days. Thankfully I lived on campus so it wasn't a problem. Do they still have the cheerleading camps in the summer? Those made summer school a bit more tolerable...

[gregintenn]

[quote]"everywhere is better than Memphis". [/quote]

Should be the state motto!

[87toy]

[quote name='peejman' timestamp='1354298270' post='852898']
Heh, I remember those days. Thankfully I lived on campus so it wasn't a problem. Do they still have the cheerleading camps in the summer? Those made summer school a bit more tolerable...
[/quote]

Never been to summer school, maybe i should start.

[RobertNashville]

[quote name='87toy' timestamp='1354297900' post='852894']
An officer wrongly shoots a dog so you have bad feelings towards the whole city?

Is that a joke?
[/quote]I think I already sufficiently addressed the issue above.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

[quote name='LINKS2K' timestamp='1354286681' post='852817']
We are looking for a good engineering program and he prefers to go out west
[/quote]You have plenty of good choices right here in TN. I wish I would have met MacGyver a few years earlier
because my son might have gone to Lipscomb in that case. He is inspiring to me about my son's future.

LINKS2K, take him around to the bunch of good schools here, first. My son graduated from UTK with a mechanical
engineering BS, then MS in the same. He is going to the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg, Germany, for his Doctorate,
in January. I know you're proud of yours as I am of mine.
And if you get the opportunity, you should meet MacGyver, also.

[MacGyver]

In 1992, I came to Nashville to look at Vanderbilt's engineering program. As an afterthought, I visited Lipscomb while I was here. One of their professors, Ralph Nance took a couple of hours out of his day to sit down with me, answer my questions about engineering in general and offer me some guidance on finding an appropriate program. During that time, I watched him interact with multiple students on a first name basis, both in and out of the department. I hadn't seen that elsewhere, and looking back, I can say that he talked me into going there - whether he realized it or not.

I later went to grad school at the Univeristy of Washington. I remember wondering how I was going to stack up in a big school with a lot of Pacific Rim students, having received the majority of my engineering education at the time from three men (twenty years later they've got six ABET accredited programs). I was presently surprised.

On a complete side note, LINKS2K make sure that you guys look at all of the scholarship options right now! Currently in America, we're graduating about 10K fewer engineering grads than are retiring each year. There's a true brain drain going on. Couple that with the fact that A LOT of foreign governements are sending blocks of their students to American universities, and essentially making deals with schools saying, "we'll pay full price for 20 students so long as you agree to accept all of them." I lectured in an engineering class at Vanderbilt the other day that had 20 students in it, and 16 of them were foreign nationals. You can posit anything you want about this from a political perspective, but what it means for the American engineering student is that there is a lot of scholarship money that's being left on the table every year. As a general rule, if you're working with a good engineering faculty at the undergrad level, you shouldn't have to pay a dime to go to grad school as an American engineering student. Vanderbilt is even having a hard time filling graduate fellowships due to the fact that so many of them have ITAR restrictions associated with them, yet they can't find American students to fill them.

I'm always happy to talk with any perspective engineering students. We need more good ones in this country.