In Dean Millar's perfect world, everyone would reach personal fulfillment through his or her career choice. For now, though, Millar is focused on changing the world one student at a time at the University at Buffalo engineering school.

After 28 years at Carbide/Praxair Inc., he is now assistant dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He started the UB Engineering Career Institute (ECI), a program that complements engineering coursework and gives engineering students real-world professional skills. He sat down with the Buffalo Law Journal to discuss his work and where he sees things heading in the engineering field. The following is a condensed version of that conversation.

BLJ: Without a degree in engineering, how did you come to your current position at UB?

Millar: Dean Lee (Dr. George C. Lee, former dean of the School of Engineering) and I believed that we have very smart, technical people coming in who are very short on leadership skills, human resource skills, people skills and that sort of thing. Engineers are heavily endowed with left brain strength. We saw the need to help students learn how to launch their careers and get jobs and sharpen their soft skills. I believe that a successful person has a great attitude and is able to take action towards goals. (The ECI) is something that had evolved throughout my career.

BLJ: After 17 years of running that institute, have you been able to measure its success?

Millar: It has been an overwhelming success by measure of student feedback and employer feedback. This is not a required course. I have not wanted students dragged kicking and screaming into this course. The benefit of this course, obviously, is to get a good job and hit the ground running when you're employed. It's to increase the relevance of the engineering curriculum. When students gain experience with real engineering employment situations, with opportunities to demonstrate leadership and teamwork skills, they will enhance their marketability.

BLJ: How is the program preparing engineering students for their careers?

Millar: It provides one academic credit for pre-employment classes with instruction on how to get the right job. This includes comprehensive instruction on how to conduct a successful student engineering job search. The semester culminates with one week of presentations from industrial and academic experts who enlighten students on leadership, communication, teamwork, value engineering, quality engineering, entrepreneurship, financial management, lean enterprise, academic careers, graduate school and other pertinent subjects.

BLJ: Internships play a big part in gaining real-world experience. How many students are participating in them each semester? And what sort of feedback are you getting?

Millar: There are departmental internships and the co-op program, so it varies. In general, more than 50 students are completing an internship for credit each summer, and a fewer number than that during the school year. A number of students go out and get jobs without credit. When the Internet came about, we gave our students the tools and motivation to go out and get their own jobs. I have predicted to the students that anyone who wants to get a job will get a job.

We have partnerships with businesses throughout the country, and we do have students interning in the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. Those are international students or students who have an international connection.

Students (in the co-op program) define the project and define the results in quantifiable terms, if possible. The dean sends those (student reports) to the Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence.

BLJ: How applicable will an engineering degree be in the 21st century?

Millar: I believe that increasingly the presidents of companies will have an engineering undergraduate degree because of the analytical, logical skills and technical basis on which businesses are being run. An engineer can go to Wall Street; an engineer can do a lot of things. Engineering applications are broadening beyond the application of one specific major.

Our engineering students are being taught by engineers, and I'm looking at it from a different viewpoint.

BLJ: In your book, "Ready for Takeoff," you talk about hot fields in engineering. What are some areas that are growing rapidly in terms of jobs?

Millar: The hot fields will continually change and, in fact, I say by all means don't jump into a hot field just because it's hot now. Throughout your career, best to keep eyes and ears open for opportunities.

The first area that's drawing a lot of attention - and it'll be true throughout our lifetime - is energy and the whole business of green engineering. By the year 2100, we are going to run out of easily recoverable oil. Bio technology is another one. People are going to broaden beyond engineering to physiology. Global opportunities - There is a huge increase of globalization. Be willing to travel and relocate anywhere. And niche markets - niche markets are the ability to sell to discreet, small markets. Things you love. If you love anything with a passion and the act lends itself to innovation, that passion may lend itself to niche markets. Computer engineering is hot; biomedical engineering is hot.

The best field to be in to get a job is that major that best includes your skills, your passion and your values. If you like to build buildings and roads, you become a civil engineer. Within civil engineering lies environmental engineering. There's a crying need to maintain, as well as build, new bridges. Our president has said we need to out-build and outcompete.

BLJ: In offering training in the soft skills, have you been able to attract a cross-section of students to engineering?

Millar: We have 170 students in ECI this spring, and it varies. I would like to double the size of ECI. I want to bring in more diversity as far as the level of student. I'd like to encourage more women and minorities to get into engineering. The number of women in engineering has remained about stable. Engineering is kind of under the radar as far as what is featured in the media as a sexy field to get into.

Breann Petro is a freelance writer from West Seneca.