As we enjoy our winter break and countdown to the New Year, we'd also like to take the time to celebrate our accomplishments over the past year. Thank you to all who have supported the College of Engineering and added to the impact of our achievements! We are tremendously grateful for the support and dedication that our College of Engineering family has provided this past year.
These are among the many successes we have achieved together in 2019:
A Growing Student Body: The College of Engineering serves more than 7,000 students - 6,500+ undergraduates and an all-time high of 975 graduate students this year. We welcomed our largest student population ever - including more than 1,700 entering freshmen. We will have graduated more than 1,200 BS, MS and PhD students in 2019.
Strengthening Diversity: Nearly 22 percent of engineering students are female, including 222 female graduate students (up from 193 last year). Our incoming student group included 242 students from underserved populations. This year, the MSU College of Engineering was recognized by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) as being among the nation's leaders in inclusive excellence.
Growing Academic Programs: In 2019, we launched a new undergraduate major in Computational Data Science, as well as new online master's degree programs in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The College now offers 11 degree granting programs at each of the BS, MS and PhD levels.
A Growing Faculty: The addition of 15 new ranked faculty for FY 2019-2020, plus the more than 65 new faculty members joining us in the previous three years, represents the largest expansion of MSU College of Engineering faculty in a generation.
A Growing Research Portfolio: Research expenditures have reached nearly $60 million - rising from $56.5 million in FY 2017 to $59.7 million in FY 2019 on a comparable basis using previous ASEE methodology. (Accounting changes in ASEE reporting beginning in 2018 result in expenditures that are not comparable to prior year reporting.)
Among major grants were two ARPA-E awards to MSU Foundation Professor and Chair James Klausner and Andre Benard, together with external partners - a nearly $3 million grant for a freshwater recovery system for hydraulic fracturing, and $2.3 million for high-efficiency power generation. In addition, H. Metin Aktulga and Jiliang Tang were each awarded NSF CAREER Awards in 2019. An additional NSF CAREER Award was announced to take effect in 2020 - Tong (Tony) Gao will become the 19th faculty member in the college to receive an NSF CAREER Award since 2010.
Leadership Growth: Three long-serving members of the College of Engineering family who had each been serving in interim capacities, were promoted within our leadership ranks in 2019. In November Amanda Idema was named Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies, and Neeraj Buch was named Chairperson of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Abdol-Hossein Esfahanian was named Chairperson of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering earlier this month.
In 2019, we were also very proud to welcome MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD, who was inaugurated as the University's 21st President
May your holidays be meaningful and memorable! I look forward to working together in 2020!
Leo Kempel, Dean
College of Engineering
Michigan State University