Here you will find informal over-a-cup-of-coffee interviews with a few people from our department, industry and with current and recent students. These should answer most of your pressing questions.

#EngineersGettingCoffee interviews:

• Playlist of all the interviews: https://bit.ly/eee-coffee

• HoD, Prof Herman Engelbrecht: http://bit.ly/eee-hod
  • Advice to first years: 1:40
  • Academic support for first years: 3:20
  • Common Engineering first year: 5:10
  • Different specialisations in E&E: 7:40
  • Difference between Data Engineering and Data Science: 7:00 and 8:30
• InnovUS, Ms Anita Nel: https://bit.ly/eee-innovus
• Some of our corporate partners: http://bit.ly/eee-corporates 
• Some of our current students: http://bit.ly/eee-currentstudents
• Some of our recent students: http://bit.ly/eee-recentstudents 
• Some academics: http://bit.ly/eee-academics
• Some women in engineering: http://bit.ly/eee-women

FAQ, answered “from the horse’s mouth”.

Questions answered by our ex-students, industry partners and academics.

1 What was your path to engineering?, 2 What do engineers do in industry?,3 What are the job prospects and trends?, 4 Advice for learners/future students, 5 Advice for engineering first years, 6 Surprises and skills needed in industry, 7 Most useful engineering skill, 8 Engineering challenges you face

Click on the ‘A’ links below to see the videos of the answers. 

Not only is our campus one of the most beautiful, but studying at our department can lead you to a vast number of lucrative career opportunities, with our graduates in demand in almost every sector of the economy. Our department has won numerous international awards and have produced world-renowned engineers. Proof of our outstanding quality is the speed at which our engineers are employed by the labour market. In other words, our electrical and electronic engineering graduates usually find work (or should we say answer their calling?) before you can say Ohm’s law.

The BEng programme in Electrical and Electronic Engineering will equip you with a broad knowledge base for a variety of career opportunities. The third and final years build on the base of mathematics and engineering sciences established during the first two years, with engineering applications in the fields of electrical energy, electronics, electromagnetic systems, computer systems, control systems and signal processing.

The programme is certified by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), which will enable graduates to register as Professional Engineers. The Washington Accord also certifies the international acceptability of the Stellenbosch University engineering qualification. So in short, the degree we offer is accepted internationally. Moreover, many of our students enter the international labour market and excel in multinational companies.

An interactive Academic Support Programme is available for students from a disadvantaged background.

In the first year, all engineering students, except Data Engineering students,  follow the same courses in order to acquire suitable mathematical and scientific skills. From the second year onward, the pure mathematical content starts to make way for engineering course modules where the mathematics is applied to engineering problems and also sometimes developed further, as required. Thus in the second year, the different engineering degree courses start to diverge.

Up until the end of the third year, all E&E Engineering students, except those in Data Engineering, follow the same set of modules. This gives the students a broad, well-rounded foundation that will enable them to move into any facet of the electrical and computer engineering job market.

In the fourth year, students can start to pursue one of the four specialisation branches (Robotics, Telecommunication, Energy or Informatics). As students at this stage already have significant knowledge of the different disciplines in E&E Engineering, they can make an informed choice about the rest of their programme.

Data Engineering already specialise in their first year — see this brochure.

Each student ends their programme with a final-year project. A significant portion of the final year of study is allotted to this project, which is the culmination of four years of study.

The programme not only addresses mathematical and technical engineering issues, but also engineering-management skills, with all final-year students taking a module on entrepreneurship.

The Department offers one four-year Bachelor’s degree programme in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, with five specialisation branches. These are Informatics, Energy, Robotics, Telecommunications and Data Engineering. The first four specialisations (Informatics, Energy, Robotics and Telecommunications) starts in the first semester of the fourth year of study. Data Engineering is a new stream that was added in 2020 for which more information is available here.

Informatics
This branch is focused on high-level computer science and software systems (such as internet communications, virtual storage, etc.), but also gives a student a good foundation in computers and data, and includes hardware and software design in both high- and low-level languages. Students who follow this branch are enrolled for three of the four final-year modules of the BSc Computer Science degree in their final two years.

Energy
In the Energy branch, students learn about electric motors, generation of power, renewable energy, control of energy and computer-controlled power management.

Robotics
The Robotics branch focuses on the area where mechanics meets electronics, and covers the design of robot vehicles, unmanned aeroplanes, and satellites. The department has been extensively involved in the development satellites built here in South Africa, and is a leader in the field of satellite engineering.

Telecommunications
Our world is filled with communication devices such as cellphones, radio and television recievers and GPS systems. Microwave signals modulated with encoded information streams, transmit sporting events across the world in fractions of a second, enabling us to watch in the comfort of our homes. This is made possible through telecommunications theory. This branch of the course focuses specifically on the knowledge of electronics, high-frequency techniques and the transmission of data needed to enter this broad field within E&E Engineering.

Data Engineering (Brochure) 
From 2020, a new focus area in Data Engineering has been added to the existing undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering BEng (E&E). The purpose of this new specialisation in Data Engineering is to prepare engineers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution where the world of work has fundamentally changed and there is a deluge of data that needs to be structured, modelled and analysed to enable data-led organisations to discover the underlying knowledge and make well-informed decisions. The Faculty of Engineering at Stellenbosch University also recently received confirmation that the new BEng degree in Data Engineering will be fully accredited by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) for registration as Professional Engineer

For detailed information on the course structure and descriptions of individual modules, please see the latest Faculty of Engineering Yearbook.

You have to meet certain minimum requirements to be admitted to this programme, as laid out in the latest Faculty of Engineering Yearbook. If you meet these requirements, you can apply here.

You can also contact Nicole Hartzenburg our faculty administrator at nicolepa@sun.ac.za or +27 (0)21 808 4835.