The College of Engineering was founded in 1910. Dean John R. Benton led five faculty members who taught 48 students a curriculum of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. The first engineering building, later named Benton Hall, was finished in 1911.
The college's purpose was to "prepare young men for useful careers by training engineers and technical employees." The college's first graduating class consisted of five men. By 1915, the college had 35 graduates, 23 of whom were employed in engineering, mostly in the state of Florida.
In 1918, most university activities were subordinated to activities supporting the World War I effort. The college was home to U.S. Army training school work and a war-measures school for radio operators. Following the war, enrollment increased. The 1920 freshman class exceeded 300 men — almost twice the size of the previous year, and the university began charging tuition fees. For $245 annually, engineering students could earn a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering or chemical engineering.
In 1941, war again spurred rapid growth in the college's research programs with the establishment of the Engineering and Industrial Experiment Station (EIES), which contributed substantial support for World War II efforts. The college had secret contracts with the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the U.S. Signal Corps, the National Bureau of Standards and other agencies totaling more than a half million dollars. After the war, reports revealed that the college's contribution "would make an enviable chapter in the history of any institution." EIES later focused on preserving Florida's natural environment.
Enrollment increased rapidly during the postwar period. In 1950, the Engineering and Industries building (now Weil Hall) was built to accommodate the need for more space. At that time, Weil Hall housed the entire college. In the 1950s, the University of Florida began enrolling women, and in 1955, the first woman graduated from the college with a master's degree in chemical engineering. In 1957, nuclear engineering was established as a department, and in 1959, the university's 10,000-watt nuclear training reactor became Florida's first critical reactor.
Always in need of more space, the college in 1964 began construction on the South Complex, with buildings for electrical, aerospace, chemical and environmental engineering, and the North Complex, with buildings to house mechanical and materials engineering. In 1967, the departments moved into their buildings.
The 1970s were a turbulent time. Due to increased sensitivity about the natural world, many college departments focused research around environmental subjects. Environmental engineering began offering undergraduate degrees; agricultural engineering focused on water conservation and irrigation; coastal engineers were looking to stabilize Florida's coastlines; nuclear engineering was studying the feasibility of offshore power plants; and mechanical engineering became a national leader in solar energy studies.
Former Dean Weil
Computers were changing the nature of research within the college. The departments of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer & Information Sciences were doing advanced research in computer-related fields. This shift began with an engineer: UF alumnus John Vincent Atanasoff. In 1973, Atanasoff was credited as the originator of the modern computer. He had created a prototype of the first digital calculator in 1939, and it possessed many features of modern computers—a binary system, regenerative memory, logical schemes as elements of software and electronic components for storing data.
Multi-disciplinary biomedical engineering research was also becoming important within the college. University of Florida materials engineers developed and patented Bioglass, the first composite material that would bind securely to bone.
Engineering enrollment tripled during this era under the leadership of Dean Wayne H. Chen, who increased efforts to attract under-represented students. Research funding rose from $4 million to $30 million during his 15-year tenure, which ended in 1988.
Chen also emphasized the need for interdisciplinary research. Several centers and institutes were founded at the University of Florida in the 1980s, including the Center for Microcomputers in Transportation; the Innovative Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute; the Software Engineering Research Center; and the Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics, the first university robotics laboratory in the United States.
Research expenditures and department growth continued under Dean Win Phillips, who is now UF's vice president for research. By 1990, the College of Engineering ranked 12th in the nation in research expenditures.
Again needing more space, groundbreaking for a $19 million New Engineering Building occurred in early 1995. The 85,000-square-foot (7,900m2) building now houses parts of the Electrical & Computer Engineering, Environmental Engineering Sciences and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering departments. The college also won a bid for a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center during the 1994–95 academic year. The Particle Science & Technology Center conducts research in an area that represents $1 trillion to the nation's economy.
A recent research focus has been on new materials, electronics and communications. UF materials engineers created the world's largest diamond at 1,600 carats (0.32kg). UF engineering experiments in crystal growth also rode to orbit on the space shuttle.
Computer science faculty and their students equipped the Computer Sciences and Engineering building with the first wireless computer network on campus. The college, collaborating with the College of Fine Arts, launched a popular digital arts and sciences program that focuses on defining, creating and advancing digital technology for applications in the entertainment industry, science, medicine, manufacturing and education.
A biomedical engineering degree program was approved in 1997 and quickly won a $1 million grant to support the program, reflecting the National Institute of Health's increase in biomedical engineering research.
By 1998, a third of the college's students were enrolled in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering majors, reflecting information technology's impact on engineering. In fall 2003, total enrollment in the college exceeded 6,000 students. Total research expenditures in the 1999–2000 academic year were more than $61 million and would rise to $90 million in the 2003-2004 fiscal year under the strong leadership of Dean Pramod Khargonekar, who took the helm in 2001 and stepped down in 2009.
Currently led by Dean Cammy Abernathy, the college's first female dean, today the college strongly emphasizes the importance of leadership and innovation in an engineering curriculum.
Schools and departments
Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment
Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering
Department of Chemical Engineering
Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Research
The University of Florida College of Engineering was awarded $130.7 million in annual research expenditures in sponsored research for 2024.[2]
Priority areas
Engineering research priorities listed on the college website:
Health
Advanced Manufacturing for Healthcare
Engineering the Brain
Soft Matter Engineering
Sustainability
Energy Systems
Resilient Coastal Communities
Security
Cybersecurity
Autonomous Systems
Enabling technologies
Informatics Tools and Techniques
Bioinformatics
Human Centered Computing
Research facilities
Major Analytical Instrumentation Center
Nanoscale Research Facility
Particle Analysis Instrumentation Center (PAIC)
Electronic Communications Laboratory (ECL)
UF Training Reactor
Graduate rankings according to U.S. News & World Report (2020 edition)
The Benton Engineering Council (BEC) was established in 1910 to serve as the executive and legislative coordinating body for the students and organizations in the College of Engineering. There are currently 51 undergraduate and graduate student societies in the council, including many UF chapters of national organizations.[4]
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Pramod P. Khargonekar is the Vice Chancellor for Research and Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. An expert in control systems engineering, Dr. Khargonekar has served in a variety of administrative roles in academia and federal funding agencies. Most recently, he served as assistant director for Engineering at the National Science Foundation (2013–2016), and as deputy director for Technology at the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy. From 2001 through 2009 he was the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Florida.
North Carolina State University's College of Engineering (CoE) is the flagship college of engineering in the state of North Carolina and the largest college at North Carolina State University in terms of enrollment, followed by CHASS, with 9 core departments and 3 affiliated departments offering 18 bachelor's, 17 master's and 13 doctoral degrees. The College is the fourth largest college of engineering in the nation. The college's Engineering Online has one of the largest enrollments of any online engineering program in the U.S. and is consistently listed as a "Best Value" in online engineering education by GetEducated.com.
The James McKelvey School of Engineering is a part of Washington University in St. Louis. Founded in 1854, the engineering school is a research institution occupying seven buildings on Washington University's Danforth Campus. Research emphasis is placed on cross-disciplinary technologies in the areas of alternative energy, environmental engineering & sustainable technology, biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology/materials science.
The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is the joint college of engineering of Florida A&M University and Florida State University, the only such joint college of its kind in the United States. The joint college was established as a joint program serving two universities in Tallahassee, Florida: The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, which received recognition from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in 2010 for ranking number one as the institution of origin for African Americans earning Doctorates in Natural Science and Engineering; and, Florida State University which has gained worldwide recognition for its extensive graduate and research programs. The college is located less than three miles from either university.
The College of Engineering and Applied Science is the engineering and applied science college of the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the birthplace of the cooperative education (co-op) program and still holds the largest public mandatory cooperative education program at a public university in the United States. Today, it has a student population of around 4,898 undergraduate and 1,305 graduate students and is recognized annually as one of the top 100 engineering colleges in the US, ranking 83rd in 2020.
The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) is one of the three faculties that comprise the University of Manchester in northern England. Established in October 2004, the faculty was originally called the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. It was renamed in 2016, following the abolition of the Faculty of Life Science and the incorporation of some aspects of life sciences into the departments of Chemistry and Earth and Environmental Sciences. It is organised into 2 schools and 9 departments: Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science; Chemistry; Computer Science; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Physics and Astronomy; Electrical & Electronic Engineering; Materials; Mathematics; and Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering.
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The John and Marcia Price College of Engineering at the University of Utah is an academic college of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. The college offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering and computer science.
The Virginia Commonwealth University College of Engineering is a Richmond-based engineering education institution that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in biomedical engineering, chemical and life science engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical and nuclear engineering. Established as the "School of Engineering" in 1996, its name and status was officially changed to the College of Engineering in April 2018. The college's dean, Barbara D. Boyan, cited doubled faculty numbers and an increase in funding as reasoning for the switch from school to college.
The University of Missouri College of Engineering is one of the 19 academic schools and colleges of the University of Missouri, a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. The college, also known as Mizzou Engineering, has an enrollment of 3,204 students who are enrolled in 10 bachelor’s programs, nine master’s programs and seven doctorate programs. There are six academic departments within the College: Chemical and Biomedica Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Industrial and Systems Engineering; Engineering and Information Technology; and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The college traces its beginning to the first engineering courses taught west of the Mississippi River in 1849. The college was ranked 88th nationally by the U.S. News & World Report in 2016.
The Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science is one of the 13 schools and colleges of Syracuse University. The College offers more than 30 programs in four departments – Biomedical and Chemical Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and The College.
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$2.379 billion (2021)
