Shaping Tomorrow's
Technologies
Enterprising Research
and Teaching Initiatives
Campaign for Delaware:
Positioning the College
for the Challenges Ahead
The College’s five academic departments serve as the foundation for the many interdisciplinary research activities. They are at the heart of the College, forming the strong links between the undergraduate and graduate teaching programs and the vigorous research efforts underway in each of the department’s laboratories. Each department is distinguished in its own field, and each can lay claim to contributing to the College’s growing reputation.
The high national ranking of the Department of Chemical Engineering has been long-standing. With more than 400 undergraduate and graduate students combined, and research expenditures in the $5 to $6 million range annually, the department continues to be one of the University’s leading academic units. The department is home to the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, founded in 1978, and the Center for Molecular and Engineering Thermodynamics, founded in 1992, both leading centers of research and forums for University-industry interactions on a variety of problems.
The department's distinguished faculty boasts eight winners of early career awards from the National Science Foundation. Few other chemical engineering departments in the country have received more of these coveted awards, which help universities attract and retain outstanding young doctorates.
Preparing engineers to tackle civil infrastructure and environmental challenges is the principal task of the faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Overall undergraduate enrollment in the department has grown by 23 percent since 1994, while most of the nation’s civil engineering programs have experienced diminishing enrollments during the same time period. The department’s Center for Applied Coastal Research, founded in 1989, is highly regarded throughout the country for its work on the mechanics of waves and the control of beach erosion. An aggressive research program in access of $4 million annually helps fuel scholarship and teaching in the department.
The fastest growing department in the College is Electrical and Computer Engineering. This growth, which is propelling the department from the smallest in the College to the largest over the course of the Campaign for Delaware, has come in concert with considerable success. Six National Science Foundation CAREER awards, two Office of Naval Research Young Investigator awards, one PECASE National Science Foundation award, and a technical Oscar for the movie Titanic are just a few of the many honors recognizing faculty and alumni of the department in recent years. The department is home to the Advanced Technology Center in Nanomachined Surfaces, the goal of which is to achieve the highest precision, nanomachined synthetic quartz surface for use in photomasks, ultimately affecting every integrated circuit made.
The focal point for materials efforts within the College, and, in fact, campus-wide and state-wide, is in the newly formed Department of Material Science and Engineering, the first new department in the College in more than 80 years. The cornerstones of this new graduate department are education renewal, a strong commitment to the integration of interdisciplinary research and education, and the establishment of strong technical partnerships with industry. A high priority for the department is the establishment of a graduate externship program, which incorporates into the education process frequent and regular off-campus research experiences for students in industrial and government laboratories. This unique program will decentralize the education process and will provide a new model for graduate education.
The Department of Mechanical Engineering’s research programs have grown substantially in the last few years and are nationally recognized for their quality. Research expenditure has more than doubled in the last five years, and the Institute of Scientific Information ranks the department 16th in the country for the impact of its research publications. The faculty is known for excellence in teaching and boasts of two Excellence-in-Teaching awards from the University and two early CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. The teaching curriculum has been completely revised and streamlined to better meet the needs of students and local industry. The department works closely with the Center for Composite Materials.