I’m interested in knowing if anyone can shed some light on the engineering facilities at the Univeristy of Alabama and what they have to offer. My son will be studying Mechanical Engineering and we are looking what different colleges have to offer not just in a classroom setting but in labs as well. I can not seem to find much if any information of the UA website.
Others will chime in … but you must go see the amazing new facilities … state of the art engineering complex … several building and most of them NEW in the last 10 to 11 years. It is very, very impressive!
http://eng.ua.edu/buildings/nerc/
Get ready to be impressed. Check out all the facilities on the left tabs. The entire engineering complex is brand new, state of the art, and truly among the very best in the country.
When we toured, we were shown nice, new labs, an earthquake simulation area, car dyno equipment, etc. The student taking us around told us that the school asked GM & Ford what they liked /disliked about their facilities and built even better! Very impressive!
I wrote this on another thread…
About 10 years ago, Senator Shelby decided that Alabama’s univs needed to have “elite school-like engineering facilities” so he promised himself that he would direct $1 Billion towards those improvements. He pushed thru multi-year earmarks to fund those new facilities on the various AL campuses with eng’g. And, since UA is his alma mater, he directed most of the money there.
UA new eng’g buildings consist of over 900,000 square feet.
Those 4 HUGE new eng’g buildings on UA’s campus can be seen here, surrounding a new eng’g quad…named after Senator Shelby
http://eng.ua.edu/buildings/
What particularly do you want to know? More info about the MechE labs?
MechE is in this building, but that doesn’t mean that a MechE student wouldn’t also be taking classes and having labs in one of the other SEC buildings.
http://eng.ua.edu/buildings/serc/
The three-story building has 175,000 square feet. There are seven large multimedia classrooms that include two with 40 seats, three with 50 seats and two lecture halls seating 90 people. There are more than 40 research and instructional labs including nine flexible-use instructional labs that can seat 36 students each. There is office space for 38 faculty and staff members and about 145 graduate students along with numerous meeting and conference rooms. Five of the College’s departments have office space in SERC, and faculty from the entire College use the classroom and instructional labs.
on the above link, there are more links for PDF’s for detailed floorplans each floor of this building, which houses MechE. for example, here is the first floor… http://eng.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/29019_First-Floor-Plan.pdf
If you look at the details for each SEC building, you may find more of what you want.
Thank you for the responses. They are very much appreciated. Though a visit to the UA from Connecticut will take a bit of planning, the facilities do look to be very impressive and definitely prompting us to visit. Hopefully in the early Spring.
@MpkDad
Try to plan your actual campus visit on a school day so that faculty will be available to meet with. Do you have the Honors College contact info to set up an Honors visit?
Set up your campus tour online first, then tell the HC what date/time that is so they cant work around that. Also tell them the student’s intended major.
Have to concur with the other opinions here. We were very impressed when we visited last spring. This might be helpful to you if you haven’t had the chance to visit yet:
https://www.youtube.com/user/UAEngineering
And don’t miss the 3-D printing lab when you visit, @MpkDad!
I agree with everyone above, my son is AE and is first year there and is loving it. Two things that we were impressed with was the engineer library that has a huge computer lab with all the software that any engineer needs. Also the more we found out before and while he has been there, is the opportunities for the students to do research with professors, be on teams etc. My son worked on a Design Build Fly Team all year as a freshman, and is in the works with doing research with one of the professors next year in his second year. We visited numerous schools and didn’t hear that with others.
Since it’s been awhile since my eng’g son started at Bama (he was a Fall '09 entry), I was wondering if the Col of Eng’g had an established tour now? Back then, the SEC was only Shelby (I think…lol), so not nearly as much to see. Just wondering if the CoE had established tours, maybe for each discipline?
When my son started ('12) the engineering department had engineering ambassadors. We were scheduled with an engineering ambassador as part of the day set up by the honors college. That student showed us around the new engineering facilities. At least at that time it was not separated by discipline.
I don’t know about established tours per se, but when we visited last year the Honors College arranged for my son to have a sit-down meeting with a Mechanical Engineering professor, also attended by an ACE (what they call the COE student ambassadors), who took my son and me around for a very personalized tour. She was really impressive, and the tour included all the engineering facilities and the 3-D Lab (a highlight!).