Hey there, I’m an ME with a serious slant for design.
There’s a few things that may need to be looked at in what she’s looking for in a job. For one, there are few jobs that allow an ME to dig down to human centred design, market research and such. On the flip side, there are few ID job that allow the designer to get super deep in structural, manufacturing and other deep technical aspects.
The unfortunate truth is that most job posting you’ll see fit pretty squarely in one of the two boxes. There are hybrid roles, but they tend to be limited to very small companies, a few of the top consultancies that get to work from end to end on products, internal R&D “innovation” groups or companies that happen to manufacture locally.
I can’t think of an ME program that has a serious design slant. Unfortunately accreditation of the schools means the curriculums don’t deviate a lot. There are some multidisciplinary grad schools but I can’t think of anything undergrad.
As AVClub mentioned, being in a city with companies that do engineering but approach it from a design centric view would be a good way to go. Building a design portfolio is certainly possible as an ME but the time requirements to make that happen means you’re looking at finishing that a few years after school. That’s been the case for me, my design skills are now being recognized, 5 years out of school. I mean, I managed last week to pitch a product line and it’s been greenlight but I spent a serious amount of time on passion projects to gain those skills.
I think an interesting way to go about for her could be to transition into pure ME from Biomed for her next semester to finish her year. Take all the machine design, materials, strength of materials and manufacturing class she can. Then transfer into an ID program with a practical approach next year. Two years of eng school will certainly have given her a good base. (Not sure if sophomore is second year… I’m not from the US)
Both cases would very much come down to networking. In the right area, I think an ID with a practical sense or a design engineer that gets design will find their spot but it can be an uphill battle to get there.
Slightly unrelated, but why is your daughter not the one posting