Strategic Plan for NC State College of Engineering

Mission The mission of the College of Engineering at NC State University is to provide students with a sound engineering education, advance the understanding and application of scientific principles, enhance economic development, and improve the quality of life of our citizens through teaching, research, and outreach programs. In addition to ensuring that our students are exposed to modern engineering principles and have access to modern equipment and technology to support their educational experience, the College seeks to create a team-oriented environment throughout our academic enterprise. Our goal is to produce well-rounded engineers who can function effectively in the technical arena as well as possess the skills to assume leadership roles in industry, academia, and government. Vision Our vision is to become a nationally renowned college of engineering that is recognized for its outstanding education, research, and outreach programs, and for the quality of its graduates.

I. Introduction

The NC State College of Engineering must provide an educational environment that prepares students for successful careers in the engineering profession. This must begin with the recruitment of qualified students who not only have the necessary academic skills to succeed but also have the commitment and self-motivation to do so. Key ingredients for success in recruiting are the Campaign for NC State Students, which is intended to build a substantial endowment for merit-based scholarships, and the hiring of a Director of Recruiting, who will work with faculty, staff, and alumni to identify and recruit top students. We will carefully monitor the effectiveness of these efforts and make adjustments as necessary to achieve our goal.

Along with improved recruitment and retention of students, we also will set a goal of attracting the very best faculty. This requires aggressive recruiting as well as access to significant startup packages for new faculty. In addition, we will seek to identify resources for endowed professorships that will enable us to recruit world-class faculty. The combination of startup packages, endowed professorships, and unique opportunities associated with the Centennial Campus will make it possible to attract outstanding faculty.

The future of the College is inextricably tied to the Centennial Campus. When the Engineering Graduate Research Center (EGRC) is fully occupied, over half of our research activities will be taking place on the Centennial Campus. We propose to relocate the entire College to the Centennial Campus over the next 10 to 15 years. To do so requires that we next move the upper-division classes and associated teaching laboratories, then follow with key interdisciplinary research activities (manufacturing, polymers, biotechnology, environmental technologies, etc.). The objective is to establish an environment in which interdisciplinary activities in both teaching and research are emphasized and the synergism between the two is highlighted. Successful implementation of the above will create a new paradigm in engineering education that is in keeping with the needs of industry.

Although the move to the Centennial Campus is critical, we recognize that it will take several years before the next building can be realized. Consequently, in order to be ready for our upcoming ABET accreditation visit in two years, we must begin immediately to develop a plan for upgrading our teaching laboratories. The College currently is developing a five-year plan that will be consistent with the new 2001 criteria and current ABET requirements. The strategy is to identify the laboratory facilities and equipment that must be in place by the year 2001 and to define a year-by-year plan to make that happen.

Another crucial consideration in planning for the future is distance education. There is increasing demand for access to engineering education throughout North Carolina. The College of Engineering has extensive experience in the technology and administration of distance education programs. The UNC system currently supports a 2+2 engineering program and graduate center at UNC-Asheville, administered by NC State. These activities will be increased, and similar distance education programs will be initiated in coordination with UNC-Charlotte and NC A&T.

NC State for several years has offered a Video-Based Engineering Education (VBEE) program statewide. Through this program students can earn a master's degree by completing courses offered on tape or by live video transmission. Typically 80 to 100 students are enrolled in the program at any given time; approximately 130 North Carolinians have earned master's degrees through VBEE. The North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), the North Carolina Information Highway, the Internet Multicast Backbone (MBONE), satellite technology, and the World Wide Web are all being used by NC State to offer both credit and non-credit courses throughout North Carolina and nationwide.

The College currently is among the leaders nationwide in industry-sponsored research. The Centennial Campus provides an opportunity to increase those activities even further. The goal is to continue the strong involvement of industry in our various research centers, to increase industry support of individual research contracts and grants, and to attract companies to the Centennial Campus. Already there are examples of companies locating on the Centennial Campus and engaging in research in collaboration with University researchers (e.g., Bayer's leasing of space in Partners I enables them to collaborate with Chemical Engineering). We fully expect such activities to increase significantly and enhance the possibility of establishing NC State as the pre-eminent institution in the nation in university-industry interactions and collaborations.

II. Long-Range Goals

The College of Engineering, in keeping with a national trend, has experienced a downturn in enrollment over the past five years. The College is committed to reversing that trend and has set a goal of increasing undergraduate enrollment by 10 percent over the next five years and 20 percent by the year 2006. Along with increased enrollment, there will be an increase in the overall quality of students entering engineering, as measured by SAT scores, high school GPA, and the number of students graduating in the top 10 percent of their high school class. This will be done by more aggressive recruiting (a Director of Recruiting has been hired), increased emphasis on qualified students transferring into upper-division engineering programs (2+2 and 3+2 programs in collaboration with other institutions in NC), and increased scholarship support (campaign for NC State Students). The goal is to triple the number of endowed scholarships so that at least 10 percent of our undergraduates will be on scholarships. The COE will revise the original campaign goal of $6M in consultation with the Engineering Campaign Committee. The new goal will be in the range of $10M to $12M.

At the graduate level we will increase both the quality of incoming students (through increased fellowship support and enhanced TA/RA stipends) and graduate enrollment (20 percent increase). Full tuition remission and health insurance coverage will be essential in attracting and retaining the best students. We will also put more emphasis on masters' degrees without thesis, in response to the greater demand for such programs.

B. The College of Engineering will further increase its efforts in the recruitment and retention of students from under-represented groups.

Although the College ranks third nationally among non-historically black colleges and universities in the enrollment of African-American students and ranks fourth in enrollment of women undergraduates, more needs to be done, especially at the graduate level. Our goal is to achieve top-10 status in the annual production of graduate degrees for under-represented groups. This will require aggressive recruiting, enhanced fellowship support, and tuition remission. Success in this area also requires additional women and minority faculty. This, in turn, will require new faculty positions so that aggressive recruiting can begin.

C. The College of Engineering will develop a strategic plan for its relocation to the Centennial Campus.

The College has taken ownership of the EGRC; the programs scheduled to move into the EGRC are

1. Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF)
2. Center for Advanced Communications and Computing (CACC)
3. Power Semiconductor Research Center (PSRC)
4. Center for Advanced Electronic Materials Processing (AEMP) - fall 1997
5. ECE Solid State Programs - summer/fall 1997
6. Civil Engineering - large structures program.

The College is severely handicapped at the present time by inadequate facilities and limited room for growth on the North Campus. It is neither practical nor cost-effective to create a modern educational and research environment through renovation of existing buildings on the North Campus. In contrast to the lack of space on North Campus, the Centennial Campus offers unlimited opportunity for growth and expansion of the College's programs. With the completion of the EGRC, approximately half of our research programs will be on the Centennial Campus. It is in the best interest of this university and the State of North Carolina to move forward with the relocation of the College to the Centennial Campus. (See Goal F.)

The first step will be to locate an upper-division classroom building and associated teaching laboratories on the Centennial Campus. This should be accompanied by, or followed shortly by, the construction of interdisciplinary research buildings (i.e., manufacturing, biotechnology, environmental technologies, polymers, etc.). Teaching laboratories related to various research activities should also be co-located in the respective buildings so that undergraduate students could be exposed to and benefit from the research activities.

The lower-division engineering courses will remain on the North Campus and be consolidated into a single building, thereby allowing other colleges to occupy other North Campus engineering buildings as they are vacated. Since engineering students take more non-engineering courses than courses in their major during their freshman and sophomore years, locating the lower-division programs on the North Campus will eliminate the need for them to travel between the two campuses.

Relocation to the Centennial Campus will make the College much more competitive in attracting the best students and faculty. Our current facilities simply do not measure up to the leading engineering programs in the nation, many of which have modern new facilities.

D. The College of Engineering will establish an educational and research environment that emphasizes interdisciplinary programs and establishes a new paradigm for engineering education.

The prevailing environment in industry is one in which engineers work in teams to solve problems that are too complex to be addressed by individual disciplines. Accordingly, there is an increasing awareness that students should be exposed to cross-disciplinary activities while they are [still] in school. The College of Engineering will build upon such programs that are already in place to establish collaborations between departments that will culminate in students from different disciplines working together on interdisciplinary senior design projects. The full potential of such collaborations will be realized when our upper-division educational programs have relocated to the Centennial Campus and departmental barriers have been eliminated. The intent is to co-locate undergraduate teaching laboratories, where appropriate, in those research buildings where similar work is carried out. The consolidation of activities also will increase the efficiency of our educational programs and result in reduced operating costs.

In every case, the goal is to have faculty and students from different disciplines work together to solve challenging problems. An added benefit from such collaborations is the opportunity for students to learn from each other and to gain an appreciation of the importance of teamwork in solving problems.

E. The College of Engineering will expand its distance education activities throughout North Carolina.

We will collaborate with UNC-Charlotte and NC A&T State University to address distance education engineering programs throughout North Carolina. These two institutions, along with NC State, have "pre-engineering" articulation agreements with 12 of the state's community colleges, thereby creating additional opportunities for other 2+2 or 3+2 programs. The objective of these efforts is to increase the number of well-qualified students transferring into upper-division engineering programs at NC State. The strategy will be to expand our 2+2 program with UNC-Asheville and establish 2+2 (or 3+2) programs with ECU, UNC-Wilmington, and selected community colleges. We anticipate having directors in place at both locations and receiving sites established during the 1997-98 academic year. Our goal is to significantly increase the number of transfer students coming into engineering at the upper-division level. The articulation agreements being put into place with community colleges would also increase the number of qualified upper-division transfer students.

We are currently establishing guidelines for delivering BSE programs to selected regions of the State. The delivery of such courses requires advanced technologies including the NCREN and the Internet. One of the major concerns is to insure that the programs meet accreditation standards. This requires that facilities for implementing senior design projects and other laboratory courses be available to students at the remote sites. In the Asheville area, we are currently exploring the possibility of utilizing facilities at UNC-Asheville or area community colleges and technical institutes for that purpose.

At the graduate level, the flagship of the COE's distance education program is the VBEE program, which over the past 10 years has offered more than 524 courses to over 6,500 registrants and has produced over 130 Master of Engineering degrees. Many of the VBEE courses are also offered to students all across the nation through the National Technological University (NTU) system.

The College will continue to offer non-credit educational programs throughout North Carolina. The Industrial Extension Service (IES) reaches thousands of individuals each year through workshops, short courses, and media programs that include video lessons and study guides.

F. The College of Engineering will increase interaction with and support by industry.

The College currently receives more than $10M of external research support from industry through company participation in centers, funding of individual contracts and grants, and joint research projects. The Centennial Campus provides a unique opportunity to increase those interactions and enable NC State to become a national leader in research support by industry. Our goal is to increase industry support by 2 to 3 times and to promote co-location of industry researchers on the Centennial Campus. The EGRC and Partners I Buildings both are targeted for significant industry activity. Similar opportunities will develop as other research complexes (manufacturing, biotechnology, polymers, etc.) take shape.

We are also planning increased interactions with industry through our IES programs. A cornerstone upon which to build that activity is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program currently in place. IES also provides support on a continuing basis to companies throughout North Carolina.

G. The College of Engineering will enhance collaborations with other colleges.

The College will increase the number of dual degree programs being carried out in collaboration with other colleges. We will build upon the success of existing programs, such as the five-year program between ECE and the College of Management that results in the student's receiving a BS degree in ECE and an MS degree in Management, to establish similar collaborations between other engineering programs and management. Several departments are currently either moving in that direction or have expressed their intent to do so.

We will also take steps to strengthen even further another successful program already in place. The Benjamin Franklin Scholars program involves students interested in combined degrees in engineering and the humanities. Currently the program has about 85 students. The focus is on developing leaders with interest in both the humanities and engineering. The intent is to couple the Ben Franklin Scholars program to our Campaign for NC State Students and to increase industry involvement. We will target specific companies to make multi-year commitments of summer job opportunities to the Ben Franklin Scholars. Rather than assigning the scholars to purely technical projects, the objective would be to affiliate them with individuals having management responsibilities. This will provide the students with first-hand experience in decision-making and leadership skills. The goal is to produce well-rounded individuals with an understanding of the roles of engineering and technology in modern society.

H. The College of Engineering will improve its infrastructure to facilitate research productivity and success.

Currently we are evaluating the pre- and post-award procedures within the College to eliminate bottlenecks and reduce faculty frustration. Improvement in this area will allow faculty to concentrate on research rather than deal with unending problems associated with the processing of proposals. Also important is ensuring compliance with all federal and state regulations. We will also move to establish a more effective strategy for cost sharing on proposals. The absence of any significant pool of matching money to be used as cost sharing is an impediment to success in attracting more research support.

I. The College of Engineering will make significant improvements in national rankings of its programs.

The College is continually confronted with a lack of recognition of the high quality of its programs. This is clearly evident in the surveys that are conducted and published by various organizations (Money magazine, US News and World Report, NRC Study of Research and Graduate Programs, etc.). Our goal is to improve significantly the College's rankings in all of those surveys. In particular, we have set a goal of having all of our programs ranked in the top quartile of the NRC study when the next NRC survey is concluded, circa 2002. (Currently two of our programs are in the top quartile, five are in the second quartile, and one each are in the third and fourth quartiles respectively).

The strategy for improving our rankings will be to

1. Increase the quality of incoming students (HS GPA, number of HS graduates in the top 10 percent of their class, SAT scores).
2. Increase retention and graduation rates.
3. Increase level of research by 40 percent by the year 2001.
4. Significantly increase the number of faculty elected to Fellow status within their professional societies.
5. Increase the number of faculty who are members of the National Academy.

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