I used a couple different Arduino boards for several projects during the course of getting my CE (Not exactly EE, but very close), and also played around with them for a few personal projects as well. The CE and EE majors all had to learn the 68hc11 for the actual embedded micro-controllers course, but only a few chose that platform for use when a project actually called for a microcontroller later on for their senior projects.
If you think that an AVR would be a great fit to accomplish what you are trying to do, then Arduino would be a great choice within that category. If you need more beefy memory or processing, an AVR would not be a good choice. You can program it in C, C++, or assembly language, which made it super easy for me to pick up and get going on some fairly complicated projects with a tight timeline.
BTW, I used an Arduino Mega board for my senior project, which was an automated aquarium system. It monitored and controlled all of the aspects of keeping an aquarium running and safe for the fish. It also had an LCD display and keypad for user I/O, and I think that was a great learning experience figuring out how to make a good user friendly I/O. Both the project mentor and the dean of engineering thought that the Arduino was a perfect fit and implemented well, this project did not need a super powerful controller, nor could it have done so simply with just electrical hardware.