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Engineering News Summer 2016

Dean's Message

Dean's Message

Dean's Message

The School of Engineering has faced a lot of changes over the past year as we deal with a 50 percent bump in enrollment that has tested the limits of our physical space.

“Ch-ch- ch-ch- changes…” The late David Bowie’s classic call to “turn and face the strange” could well have been our theme song in the School of Engineering during the past year. With a 50 percent bump in enrollment over the past few years testing the limits of our physical space, and with plans in the works, but not yet underway, to create a revolutionary STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) complex here on campus, we have definitely faced, embraced, and struggled with strange, uncharted territory. And change is good!

A year ago we packed up and moved our engineering administrative offices and some of our research areas out of the venerable Bannan Engineering Center to a new 20,000 sq. ft. space just off campus. It was a difficult to split our community, but by doing so, we freed up office space for new faculty, added a classroom, and expanded laboratories on campus. Now the Department of Bioengineering has six new labs, our Robotics Systems Laboratory, Maker Lab, and Frugal Innovation Hub have about doubled their square footage, and we have added the EdVenture Lab, a space to host and incubate student and faculty engineering projects.

None of this would have been possible without turning to “face the strange.” A year ago we were desperate for space and uncertain about the changes to come. Today we know we can flourish through change. We also know there is a lot more to come! “Ch-ch- ch-ch- changes…”

Engineering
Dean Mungal, Godfrey Mungal