Teaching, research, and service are vital parts of graduate studies in the College of Engineering. Applied and basic research projects fulfill educational roles in teaching students and showing them how to perform independent studies. They also encourage faculty and students to pursue scholarly achievements in searching for new knowledge and in solving engineering problems.

College of Engineering faculty have degrees from a wide variety of locations, including nearly every major research university in the US and Canada. Nearly 100 percent of engineering faculty have PhD’s and are engaged in active research and graduate instruction.

[edit] Programs of Study

The College of Engineering administers programs on both the Lincoln and Omaha campuses. The College offers undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering, construction management and engineering technology. Approximately 1,600 undergraduates study engineering or construction management on the Lincoln campus and another 900 students study engineering and technology on the Omaha campus. The College’s programs provide students with solid foundations necessary for challenging and rewarding careers in a society experiencing dramatic technological change.

Approximately 600 graduate students are pursuing MS or PhD degrees in engineering. The majority of these students study on the Lincoln campus. The teaching and research assistantship stipends for these students range from about $9,000 to $16,000 per year depending on the field and duties. Tuition remission is available in many of these cases. Graduate students in engineering have also been notably successful in obtaining fellowships available at the University, corporate, and national levels. Among these are NSF, DOE, and USDA fellowships.

MEng, MAE, MS and PhD degrees in engineering are granted by the Graduate College. The Master of Engineering degree program offers a choice of three areas of concentration: engineering management, software engineering, or telecommunications engineering. The Master of Architectural Engineering (MAE) is offered in Architectural Engineering. Master of science programs are available in agricultural and biological systems, architectural engineering, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, engineering mechanics, industrial and management systems, manufacturing, and mechanical engineering. Twelve doctoral fields are available: agricultural and biological systems engineering; architectural engineering; biomedical engineering; chemical and biomolecular engineering; civil engineering; computer engineering; construction, electrical engineering; engineering mechanics; industrial, management systems, and manufacturing engineering; materials engineering; and mechanical engineering. Masters and doctoral programs are arranged through faculty in the various departments and research centers.

[edit] Facilities

The College of Engineering maintains spacious, modern laboratories for research and teaching in all the fields and academic disciplines listed above. Technician-staffed machine shops, including foundry and carpentry facilities, and a technician-staffed electronics shop repair, maintain, and develop the necessary instrumentation for the research and teaching activities of the College. In addition to the College’s shops and laboratories, the Department of Biological Systems Engineering operates extensive laboratory and field research facilities across the State.

Extensive computational facilities include a wide variety of networked microcomputers, minicomputers, and superminicomputers with access to central mainframes and MIDnet, which ties to NSFnet, a supercomputer network. Graduate students have access to many workshops and academic courses in computational methods through the Academic Computing Resource Center and the academic departments.

The Engineering Library is a Government Printing Office and Patent depository. Its holdings include over 380,000 books, 1,000 journals, and 370,000 microfiche items. It contains the major archival journals, references, and texts of the various fields. The Engineering and other University libraries also provide computer literature searching and participate in an interlibrary loan system for rapid access to references not available locally.

The Walter Scott Engineering Complex houses modern research and teaching laboratories for civil, electrical, industrial, and mechanical engineering, along with those of engineering mechanics. The Walter Scott complex is the principal site of the annual Engineering Week Open House in which student and faculty projects are displayed to the public. In addition, the College has laboratory and classroom facilities in L.W. Chase Hall, Nebraska Hall, Othmer Hall and the Peter Kiewit Institute building in Omaha.

[edit] Other Center Involvement

College of Engineering faculty and graduate students are also intimately involved in research activities of several university-wide centers. These include the Water Center, the Center for Biotechnology, the Industrial Agricultural Products Center, and the Food Processing Center. These are described in other parts of this Bulletin. These Centers and the Engineering Research Centers, in conjunction with the interdisciplinary approach to graduate studies, offers students at UNL unique opportunities to develop exceptionally strong graduate programs geared toward societies increasingly complex social and technical problems.