Agricultural Engineering

Overview

The agri-food sector is one of Ireland's most important indigenous manufacturing sectors, accounting for the employment of around 150,000 people.

Enterprise Ireland (EI) has identified Agricultural Machinery as one of the dominant engineering sub sectors within Irish Engineering. Furthermore, EI have identified this area as having significant growth potential in the coming years.

Students of the Agricultural Engineering degree from the Atlantic Technological University will gain transferable knowledge and skills in the following areas:

• Design
• Manufacturing
• Agricultural sciences

This degree is very practical with weekly lab classes, workshop practice, individual and group projects as well as work placement experience. Over the three years of the course, each student will receive, on average, 24 hours of tuition per week.

Students will be based between the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at GMIT Galway campus and GMIT Mountbellew campus (at Mountbellew Agricultural College).

Job Opportunities

It is envisaged that graduates from the programme will be employed in a wide diversity of agricultural engineering related disciplines both nationally and internationally, namely;

• Technical/engineering drafting, field technicians

• Agricultural engineering design/systems design

• Agricultural systems (destructive and non-destructive testing)

• Agricultural processing, engineering sales, service etc. 

• Cognate disciplines which involving heavy machinery design – (i.e. Forestry, Peat &  Mining)

• Bioenergy/biomass sector

Some graduates may also become self-employed.