<p>You might want to read this on UVa Eng first–it’s a mixed bag at best. From an internal UVa study.</p>
<p>Overview of SEAS
In the most recent ranking by USNWR, the School is ranked number 37 among graduate
programs and 34th among undergraduate programs. It is comprised of the following eight
departments:
Chemical Engineering (ChE)
Civil Engineering (CE)
Computer Science (CS)
Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)
Material Science and Engineering (MSE)
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Biomedical Engineering (BME) (jointly with the School of Medicine)
Systems and Information Engineering (SIE)
The first six departments represent classic core disciplines found in almost every
engineering school and Biomedical Engineering is a relatively new area for engineering
schools. Systems and Information Engineering is somewhat unusual in its name; its
substance however is covered by many departments of industrial engineering and
operations research.
Of the core departments, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering and
Materials Science and Engineering show a great deal of dynamism and are frustrated by
their continued low ranking. The other three all show serious weaknesses that call for
early attention. Biomedical and Materials are both doing well and enjoy relatively high
rankings. Systems and Information Engineering shows a good deal of vitality, but
probably because of its somewhat unusual name is unranked.
There are several characteristics of SEAS that are quite pronounced. First, there is a
strong correlation between newness and quality. Second, there is very wide disparity in
quality among the departments, more so than in most engineering schools. Third, several
topics are covered by multiple departments, sometimes more than two. Finally, SEAS is
small and broad at the same time. Each of these is potentially a problem and an
opportunity.
The eight departments in the School fall naturally into three groups. The three
departments in newer areas: BME, MSE and SIE are energetic and high quality
departments that are performing very well. CS and ECE are making some progress in
breaking out of the pack. Both are ranked at the bottom of the top third among peer
departments, an acceptable place. These 5 departments can be the hallmark of SEAS.
All, especially BME, SIE and CS require growth in faculties and graduate students and
need to be given funding and resource priority.
Review of Individual Departments
Chemical Engineering (ChE)
This is a small and aging department. It has the lowest number of undergraduates among
the departments in the School. Several senior faculty members are retiring, but no
coherent plan for replacement appears to be in place.
However, ChE has several bright spots. Its faculty includes two renowned prize-winning
researchers on catalysis and two young faculty members who recently received NSF
Career Awards. It is active in three of the most exciting areas of research in engineering:
biotechnology, energy, and nanotechnology. The department has 11 tenured and tenure
track faculty and an undergraduate class of 121 students, a graduate class of 50 of which
90% are PhD track students. Its external research funding is $2.2M and its research
expenditures $1.6M. In the most recently available USNWR rankings the department
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ranks number 33 among graduate programs and number 25 among undergraduate
programs, one of the most highly ranked SEAS departments.
The strength of the department is in energy catalysis, the dynamics of complex chemical
and biological systems, a newer interest in nanostructure materials and bio-molecular
engineering.
The department has much to offer and it would not take much to make this an even more
vigorous and well-recognized department. ChE needs focus, strategy, and leadership and
probably an increase in faculty to bootstrap themselves into a more robust position.
SEAS should give the department some positive attention and support. It is an easy
department to energize and one of its lower-hanging fruits.
Civil Engineering (CE)
CE has a faculty of 12 FTEs, an undergraduate class of 167, and a USNWR rating of
number 41. It is grouped into three research areas: transportation, environmental, and
structures. Transportation enjoys a reasonable level of research funding, while the other
two areas have very little funding. CE wants to change its name to Civil and
Environmental Engineering and to adopt “sustainable infrastructure” as its unifying
theme. Sustainability is an emerging and popular theme for teaching and for policy
analysis. Sustainability requires careful explication for a research strategy. It can be so
broad as to embrace the entire University. It must be focused to attract funding from
external sponsors.
While Transportation is a reasonably strong group, it alone can hardly make a viable
civil engineering department. Judging from the presentation, the faculty in CE is
dispirited and needs help. This is a very weak department in any comparison group.
Without substantial help from the Dean and the University administration, the future
viability of CE is in serious doubt. In fact, it is not unreasonable to suggest that UVA
consider closing the department, salvaging what it can, combining it with other programs
in UVA (e.g., environmental activities), phasing out the existing commitments to students
and faculty over a three year period, and letting Virginia Tech with a more substantial
and more vigorous department be the Virginia school for CE. (For comparison: USNWR
ranking of Virginia Tech CE is 10 vs. 41 for UVA.)
Computer Science (CS)
We were very impressed by the quality of leadership shown by the department chair who
is a strong and enthusiastic advocate for the department and for the profession. The
department has 25 tenured and tenure track faculty and an undergraduate class of 300
students, 100 doctoral students and 12 post-docs. Its externally funded research awards
are between $6M and $10M annually and expenditures per year are $7M. USNWR
ranking of the department is number 29. Focus areas for research are Cyber Physical
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Systems, High Performance Computing and Secure and Dependable Software. There is
also close cooperation with the Humanities in an Institute devoted to that task.
All indications are that the faculty is active, cohesive, and attract substantial recognition
and research funding. Student enrollment at both undergraduate and graduate (doctorate
only) levels is healthy. The research areas are both well focused and diverse. The CS
department is one of the larger ones in the School and continues to grow and enjoys a
quality faculty and strong leadership. However, the faculty is frustrated by a relatively
low ranking among the CS departments in the nation (number 35 among 108 departments
in the last NRC rating) and very poor space. We have walked the building and can attest
to the space problem. A promised new building, though high in Campus priority, is
several years away. In the interim UVA should clean up the existing building, making it
more livable. Space is a strong factor in the competition for faculty and graduate students
and CS needs immediate relief if it is to remain competitive. This is a critical issue for
the Dean.
Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
With 28 tenure-track faculty members, ECE is the largest department in the School in
terms of faculty size. However, CS and BME have more PhD students; and BME, MAE
and SIE all have more undergraduates. The undergraduate class is 270 and the graduate
class 150, of which half are on the PhD track. In terms of research funding, ECE is also
in the middle of the pack. The research awards per year are $11M ($392K/faculty) and
the research expenditure $7M ($244K/faculty). The Chair’s goal is to increase the
research award per faculty to $500K. All in all, this appears to be an average department
both within the School and in comparison with peer departments in the nation. Its
USNWR rankings are 35 for the graduate and 21 for the undergraduate EE programs, and
25 for the graduate Computer Engineering program.
However, there are indications that ECE is on the move. It has made six recent faculty
hires with at least two senior appointments. One of these is Professor Joe Campbell, who
was lured from University of Texas at Austin with a BOV Distinguished Chair. He
appears to be quite happy with the move and asserts that ECE is a better department than
the one he left (USNWR ranking of UT Austin graduate EE and CE programs: 10 and 6
respectively). The other senior hire is Toby Berger, who retired from Cornell in January
2006. Although Professor Berger is a well known figure in information theory and
continues to be a productive researcher, there are some questions as to the wisdom of
appointing someone late in his career to this position.
In terms of external funding, there were some large increases in the last two years, and
with new faculty hires in active fields, funding does not appear to be an immediate
problem.; but ECE should focus on attracting more high quality students, especially at
the PhD level.
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Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)
The department has 27 tenured and research track faculty, an undergraduate class of 278
students, and a graduate class of 90 of which 50% are PhD track students. Its external
research funding is $5.1M and its research expenditure $8.2M in FY 200616. The
department is ranked 32 among graduate Aerospace Engineering programs and 33 among
graduate Mechanical Engineering programs in USNWR.
MAE has three problems that need management attention. These are: aerospace
engineering, research funding, and the Center for Applied Bio-Dynamics.
Aerospace was a group absorbed by MAE, when its home department was dissolved.
MAE needs to decide what to do with aerospace engineering. The presentation that we
received seems to suggest that MAE leadership is letting aerospace engineering die by
natural attrition. This may be the best course available, but aerospace continues to attract
more than 20% of the undergraduates, one of whom attended our meeting with
undergraduates and spoke enthusiastic of the field. The situation is messy.
The second problem is research funding. The total amount of approximately $5 million
in awards per year is acceptable, but the distribution is very poor. One member of the
MAE faculty accounts for 30% of the funding and four members account for more than
72%. Fully half of the faculty receives no funding of their own. While they might be
active supporting PI’s in their grant activities, nevertheless one would expect that a
greater number of the faculty would have grants of their own.
Center for Applied Biomechanics (CAB) is a large project in MAE which has significant
industrial support and accounts for a large percentage of its external funding. A large
portion of its activity is involved in crash research for the automobile industry using
cadavers. CAB may also be a problem. From both the presentation made to us by CAB’s
director and from discussions with graduate students, it appears that much of the activity
in CAB consists of contract testing with only a small portion that is truly research. There
was some concern raised in discussions with the students that this “contract testing”
activity often greatly slowed the progress of the theses and dissertations. If the students’
comments represent a true picture of the general operation of CAB, then there may be
issues of the appropriateness of having CAB as an integral part of MAE and of recruiting
graduate students to staff its functions. CAB may benefit the department, but is it in the
best interest of the students?
With these problems, MAE is a troubled department and needs early management
attention.
16 Data provided by UVA in an email dated 6/21/07.
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Biomedical Engineering (BME)
Biomedical Engineering has 19 faculty17 and ranks number16 in FY2006 NIH funding
and number 2 in citations among such departments. With a planned new building for
Biomedical Engineering on the main grounds of the University, which is high status, they
will more than double their space. The department has an undergraduate class of 200
undergraduate students, and 86 graduate students, the majority of whom are on a PhD
track. They plan to grow to 25 faculty, but consider that plan not bold enough. External
research funding is $8.6M ($477K/capita) and research expenditures $4.4M. USNWR
rankings are number16 for the graduate and number 17 for the undergraduate BME
programs, which makes it the most highly ranked department in SEAS.
Their research funding illustrates the complexity of attribution, with $1.5M from SOM
faculty, $4.9M from College of Engineering faculty, including a Coulter Foundation
grant and Orthopaedics/ Laurencin projects, averaging to $480K per faculty member/year
(similar to Biology, Psychology, and Chemistry, and higher than Internal Medicine).
Founded in 1967, it is one of the oldest programs of its kind. BME enjoys strong student
demand and attracts substantial funding support including some major foundation grants.
In spirit and in faculty quality of life, it seems to be more closely allied with the School
of Medicine than with Engineering. Nonetheless, it is a highly valued member of the
School and deserves strong support from the Dean.
This department is especially multidisciplinary and engaged in translational research.
They have a world-class cardiovascular bioengineering group and a consortium of
biomedical imaging researchers. They have benefited from successful proposals for
national investments in biomedical engineering by the Whitaker Foundation and now the
Coulter Foundation. They have had three presidents and four board members of their
leading professional society; one of their junior investigators won the society’s Young
Investigator Award in 2004 and was named to the TR100 by MIT’s journal of innovation,
Technology Review. They have licensed products from their research on tissue
engineering materials, in vitro diagnostic devices, stem cell therapeutics, microbubble
contrast agents, imaging devices and software, and non-peptide drugs. The focus on
research is matched by an equal focus on education, especially undergraduate education
through classroom and laboratory experience. Undergraduate experience is also
augmented through student internships in biomedical companies around the
Charlottesville area, some being spin-offs from UVA and the BME activity in particular.
Material Science and Engineering (MSE)
MSE is a graduate education only and heavily research oriented department. The
department also includes the Engineering Physics activity. It has 23 faculty and about 80
graduate students. It is well positioned to take advantage of the current interest in
nanotechnology and is aggressively seeking big project funding. It has proposals in
17 NOTE: Data provided by UVA in its 6/21/07 email indicate 9 faculty in the department as of Fall 2006,
but may not take into account faculty appointed to other departments but working within BME.
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preparation for a half dozen centers in various topical areas and hopes to win at least two.
Even without these, it enjoys a good level of external funding for research across a wide
spectrum of material science topics. MSE also enjoys very good space as the principal
occupant of a new building, Wilsdorf Hall.
One weakness appears to be student demand. For a department with 22 full time faculty
members and no undergraduate students, MSE has only about 50 PhD students, but hopes
to reach the level of 100 in time. It has responsibility for students in engineering physics
and it is unclear whether this represents a significant load. All in all, the student
productivity for MSE is low.
Systems and Information Engineering (SIE)
The department consists of 14 tenured and tenure track faculty, an undergraduate class of
260 students, and a graduate class of 76 students. Its external research funding is $11M
and its research expenditure $5M. No ranking is available, because of the not common
title for such a department as already mentioned. We would recommend strongly that the
present department title be maintained, because the systems aspect of its teaching and
research activities are unique and should be attractive to both students and employers.
This is a well balanced and innovative department with a great deal of vitality. The
balance between undergraduate and graduate programs is particularly noteworthy. Its
faculty members staff an award winning undergraduate program that enjoys the highest
enrollment in the School. Its graduate programs include two popular Masters-degree
offerings and enroll 54 PhD students working on a great diversity of timely research
topics. All in all, the education balance in SIE is admirable.
SIE is well positioned to serve students who want careers in the fast growing high-end
service industries such as financial services and logistics. They receive an education that
combines strong analytical techniques with broad exposure to business applications.
Students with such an education are in great demand, perhaps even more than those with
a business education.
SIE is seeking funding for an Engineering Research Center in the area of large-scale
systems. The principal investigator for this proposal is Professor Barry Horowitz, a
former senior executive from industry with extensive experience in large scale systems.
SIE in engaged in an extraordinarily wide range of research areas. These include many
that are also covered by other departments, e.g., wireless networks, transportation
systems, bioinformatics and bio-materials. These offer opportunities of interdepartmental
collaboration that are particularly important for a small school of engineering.</p>