Glossary
Engineering Professor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential engineering professor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key engineering professor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in engineering professor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ABET
- Engineering accreditation.
- Capstone design
- Senior design project.
- Circuits
- Electrical paths.
- Conference
- Research meeting.
- Grant
- Research funding.
- Indirect costs
- University overhead on grants.
- Industry sponsor
- Company funding a project.
- Journal
- Research publication.
- Lab safety plan
- Rules for lab work.
- Patent
- Legal protection for inventions.
- PI
- Principal investigator.
- Research group
- Professor’s lab team.
- Statics
- Forces on still objects.
- Tenure
- Permanent status.
- Thermodynamics
- Science of energy.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Engineering Professor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Engineering Professor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.