Materials engineers work out why materials behave as they do and choose or design them to meet a requirement — metals, ceramics, polymers, composites and semiconductors — and they are who finds out why something broke. ⚠ It is the smallest engineering occupation on this site, and in Florida it is mostly a graduate degree.
What the work actually is
O*NET: materials engineers evaluate materials and develop machinery and processes to manufacture materials meeting specialized design and performance specifications, working with composites, metals, ceramics, plastics and polymers. The tasks are concrete — conduct or supervise tests on raw materials or finished products to ensure their quality; review new product plans and make recommendations for material selection, based on design objectives; analyze product failure data and laboratory test results to determine causes of problems; determine appropriate methods for fabricating and joining materials.
⚠ Read the third one again: failure analysis is a large part of this job. When something breaks — a weld, a turbine blade, an implant, a circuit board — a materials engineer is who finds out why. It is forensic work, and it is the part of the discipline other engineers call on most.
Projected need
O*NET, on federal projections: 23,000 materials engineers employed (2024), growth “faster than average (5% to 6%)”, 1,500 openings a year, median wages $112,860 (2025), and 80% of respondents said a bachelor’s degree is required.
⚠ This is the smallest engineering occupation on this site — 23,000 nationally, against 369,000 civil engineers. It is a good field and a narrow one: choose it because the work interests you, and expect to move for the job rather than to find one down the road.
⚠⚠⚠ In Florida this is mostly a GRADUATE degree, and that changes the plan
Four Florida public institutions award in materials engineering, and only the University of Florida and UCF award a bachelor’s — FIU and USF are master’s and doctoral only. The undergraduate course catalogue says the same thing from the other direction: of the EMA materials courses taught in Florida, the best-carried undergraduate one reaches three institutions, while the graduate ones reach as many.
So the realistic route for most Florida students is not a materials bachelor’s. It is a mechanical, chemical or physics degree with every materials elective you can take, then a materials master’s — which is how a large share of practising materials engineers got there anyway. ⚠ If you are at an institution with no materials degree, that is not a closed door; it is the normal door.
⚠ One course makes the difference early: EGN3365 Materials in Engineering, the survey that six institutions carry. It is the standard first exposure, it is usually required for mechanical and civil students anyway, and how much you enjoy it is the honest test of whether this path is for you.
Necessary skills
- Structure-property thinking. The discipline's one big idea: what a material does follows from how it is arranged, at scales from the atom to the grain. Everything else is detail on top of it.
- Chemistry and modern physics together. ⚠ Materials sits where the two meet — bonding, crystal structure, phase diagrams, electronic properties — and students who like only one of them find the middle uncomfortable.
- Laboratory technique and characterisation. Microscopy, diffraction, mechanical testing and thermal analysis. The instruments are the profession's working vocabulary, and hands-on time with them is the most transferable thing a degree gives you.
- Statistics and failure data. Materials fail probabilistically; fatigue and fracture are statistical subjects, and a single test result rarely settles anything.
- Writing a findings report. A failure analysis ends in a document that engineers, lawyers and managers all read. ⚠ The technical work is wasted if the report cannot carry it.
Advice
- ⚠ Decide early whether you are aiming at the bachelor’s or the master’s route, because they need different undergraduate choices. If the master's, take the mechanical or chemical degree and load it with materials, thermodynamics and chemistry electives.
- Get into a laboratory as an undergraduate. In a small, research-heavy field, the professor who knows your work is a larger factor in admission and hiring than the transcript.
- Follow the industry, not the title. Florida's materials work sits inside aerospace and space systems, medical devices, semiconductors and marine corrosion — so read the aerospace, biomedical and chemical paths beside this one.
- Corrosion is Florida's speciality whether or not anyone advertises it. Salt air, humidity and a coastline make it a standing problem for every structure and vehicle in the state, and it is a durable niche.
- Take the FE in your final year if licensure might matter. Most materials work runs under the industry exemption and few of these engineers licence — but the exam is far easier while the coursework is fresh.
A program is a field of study, one level above a degree — each page says which degrees it
covers and which Florida institutions award them. ⚠ The count is institutions that
awarded a credential in the field in 2023;
it is not a promise that a school runs this exact degree, and it counts something different
from the course-based list further down.
Careers filed under the same broad field in the federal classification
(ENGINEERING) — often they share early coursework, and each row says which group it is filed in.
⚠ Worth reading BEFORE you commit: switching between neighbours is cheap early and
expensive late.
Selected, not exhaustive — the courses specific to this path plus the foundations it is built on.
A course number does not identify a course in Florida: always check your own
institution's catalog and take a syllabus to an adviser.
MAC2311
—Calculus I
Guide
Calculus I — the gate on the degree.
⚠ ⚠ Transfer is guaranteed on the COMPLETED sequence; finish calculus at one institution if you can.
MAC2312
—Calculus with Analytic Geometry II
Guide
Calculus II — integration and series, used throughout kinetics and diffusion.
MAC2313
—Calculus with Analytic Geometry III
Guide
Calculus III — multivariable methods; stress, diffusion and heat flow are all fields.
MAP2302
—Differential Equations
Guide
Differential Equations — diffusion, heat treatment and phase transformation are rate problems.
PHY2048
—General Physics with Calculus I
Guide
Physics with Calculus I — mechanics, and the basis of how a material carries load.
PHY2049
—General Physics with Calculus II
Guide
Physics with Calculus II — electricity and magnetism, which the electronic-properties half of the discipline rests on.
Modern Physics — ⚠ the course that separates materials engineering from mechanical: quantum behaviour, bonding and band structure are why a semiconductor is not a metal.
⚠ ⚠ Ten public institutions carry it (DSC, FAMU, FGCU, Florida Poly, Florida State, Miami Dade, UCF, UF, UNF, USF). Where a programme does not require it, take it anyway if solid-state or electronic materials interest you.
CHM2045
—General Chemistry I
Guide
General Chemistry I — bonding and structure, the first half of the discipline's other parent science.
⚠ ⚠⚠ FLORIDA NUMBERS GENERAL CHEMISTRY TWO WAYS AND NO INSTITUTION CARRIES BOTH — twenty institutions use the CHM2045 family and nineteen the CHM1045 family. Same course, credit articulates either way, but the other number does not exist at your institution. ⚠ The C form packages the laboratory into one 4-credit registration.
CHM2046
—General Chemistry II
Guide
General Chemistry II — equilibrium, thermodynamics and electrochemistry. ⚠ Electrochemistry is corrosion, which in Florida is a career of its own.
⚠ ⚠ Numbered CHM1046 at the institutions using the CHM1045 family.
CHM2210
—Organic Chemistry I
Guide
Organic Chemistry I — ⚠ required where polymers are emphasised, and polymers are half of modern materials engineering. Check your programme before skipping it.
⚠ ⚠ Twenty-nine public institutions carry it — among the most widely offered courses in Florida, and easy to complete before transferring.
STA2023
—Elementary Statistics
Guide
Statistics — fatigue life, fracture and quality control are distributions rather than single numbers.
EGN3365
—Structure and Properties of Materials
Guide
Materials in Engineering — the survey course: crystal structure, phase diagrams, heat treatment, mechanical behaviour. ⚠ The honest test of whether this discipline is for you, and it is available at six institutions whether or not yours awards the degree.
⚠ ⚠ FAU, FIU, Florida Poly, UCF, USF and UWF under this number; other programmes teach the same survey as EMA3010 Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering (UF, UNF). Same course, two prefixes.
Statics — forces in equilibrium, and the vocabulary of stress that mechanical behaviour needs.
⚠ ⚠ Seven institutions: DSC, FAMU, FAU, FIU, Florida Poly, UNF, USF.
EGN3331
—Strength of Materials
Request a guide
Strength of Materials — stress, strain, deflection and failure. ⚠ Where 'the material broke' becomes a calculation you can check.
⚠ ⚠ FOUR NUMBERS FOR THIS SUBJECT: EGN3331 (FAMU, FAU, Florida Poly, Florida State, UNF, USF), EGN3331C (FGCU, UCF), EGM3520 (FIU, UF) and departmental variants elsewhere. Match the subject, not the number.
Thermodynamics — energy, entropy and equilibrium: the framework phase diagrams and heat treatment are drawn from.
⚠ ⚠ EGN3343 at DSC, FAU, FIU, Florida Poly, UCF and USF; EML3100 at FAMU, Florida Poly, Florida State, UF and UNF. The mechanical and the general-engineering numbering of one subject.
EMA3010
—Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering
Request a guide
Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering — the discipline's own first course where a department exists, and deeper than the survey above.
⚠ ⚠ Carried by UF and UNF only — which is what a two-institution bachelor's footprint looks like in the course catalogue. Elsewhere, EGN3365 is the equivalent.
EMA4121
—Physical Metallurgy
Request a guide
Physical Metallurgy — phase transformation, heat treatment and microstructure control in metals: the classical core of the field.
⚠ ⚠ FIU and UF. FAMU and Florida State approach the same ground through EMA4223 Mechanical Metallurgy (also at FIU and UCF).
EMA4223
—Mechanical Metallurgy
Request a guide
Mechanical Metallurgy — deformation, strengthening mechanisms and fracture: why a metal yields where and when it does.
⚠ ⚠ FIU, UCF and UF — three institutions, which is the widest reach of any upper-division materials course in the state.
EMA3066
—Polymer Science & Engineering
Request a guide
Polymer Science and Engineering — chains, glass transition, processing and the reasons a plastic part fails in sunlight. ⚠ Half of modern materials work is polymers and composites.
⚠ ⚠ FIU, Florida Poly and UF. Where no polymer course exists, organic chemistry plus a composites elective is the usual substitute.
EMA4513
—Microstructural Characterization of Materials
Request a guide
Microstructural Characterisation — microscopy, diffraction and spectroscopy: learning to SEE the structure rather than infer it. ⚠ The most employable laboratory skill in the discipline.
⚠ ⚠ FAMU, Florida State and UCF. Instrument time is the thing that transfers — if your programme has no characterisation course, look for a research group that will train you on the equipment.
EMA3413
—Electronic Properties of Materials
Request a guide
Electronic Properties of Materials — conduction, band structure and the semiconductor behaviour behind every device. The route from materials into microelectronics.
⚠ ⚠ Florida Poly and UF. Elsewhere the material appears in a solid-state devices course on the electrical side (EEE4351).
EMA4714
—Materials Selection & Failure Analysis
Request a guide
Materials Selection and Failure Analysis — the capstone skill: choosing a material against competing requirements, and working out afterwards why the choice failed.
⚠ ⚠ Carried by UF alone under this number, which is the clearest single sign of how thin the undergraduate provision is. ⚠ Where it does not exist, a mechanical design or capstone course is where selection gets taught — ask before you assume it is covered.
EGN3613
—Principles of Engineering Economy
Guide
Engineering Economic Analysis — material selection is a cost decision as often as a technical one, and the trade-off is the job.
⚠ ⚠ DSC, FAMU, FIU, Florida State and UCF; elsewhere it is taught under a departmental number.
39 Florida public institutions teach courses on this path. The count is
how many of the 23 listed courses each one carries — it shows where
the path is best covered. It is not a statement that a school offers this as a
degree; for that, check the institution’s own programme list.
Requirements change. These are the authorities that decide them — check them directly before
committing to a route.