College of Engineering, Wayne State University

Wayne State University College of Engineering
Established	1934
Type	Public
Dean	Farshad Fotouhi
Location	Detroit, MI, USA
Website	WSU COE Website

Wayne State University has one of the most prestigious engineering schools in the state. There are 2 main branches to choose from: engineering and engineering technologies. Within these 2 branches include 13 total undergraduate studies. Engineering offers 8 different majors which are: Civil, Environmental, Chemical & Materials Science, Mechanical, Biomedical, Industrial & Manufacturing, Computer, and Electrical engineering. Engineering Technology offers 4 main fields of study: Mechanical Engineering Technology, Electrical Electronic Engineering Technology, Electric Transport Technology, and Electromechanical Engineering Technology. The College of Engineering employs over 100 professors and advisors; and as of 2003 the College was home to over 2600 undergraduate and graduate students. The College of Engineering partakes in very important research and has been rewarded with breakthrough results and findings.

History

Wayne State University originally started out by the name of Detroit Junior College until it was made Wayne University in 1934. Early engineering education began in 1920, when a teacher by the name of Ernest Drake came to Detroit Junior College and began teaching basic level engineering courses in the schools chemistry program. In 1934, the first dean of the College of Engineering was named Arthur Carr. Carr served as the dean until his death in 1956. By 1937, the College of Engineering had 24 faculty members and 632 full-time students. It was located in Old Main and many of the laboratories were located in the basement of the building. In 1950, the College of Engineering moved out of Old Main into a new building on Putnam Avenue. The new building contained new laboratories as well as using some previous rooms in Old Main. In 1986 the new engineering building was built, and it is located on the corner of Anthony Wayne Drive and Warren. After 10 years of running the college, a new building was constructed for industrial and manufacturing engineering. The building is now currently next to the building that houses most of the Engineering Technology students. After only 23 years, the College was in need for expansion. So in April 2009, the College opened a $27.3 million addition called the Marvin I. Danto Engineering Development Center. The building now houses many new state-of-the-art laboratories, which have been the center of very important research findings. In 2010 yet another new scene arose, Biomedical engineering was installed as an undergraduate (Bachelors degree) program. As of 2001, the Wayne State University College of Engineering was ranked 6th in the nation of earned master degrees, as well as 21st in the nation of accepted graduate (Masters degree) enrollments. These high percentages have slowly declined due to the tightening of visas and green cards now strongly enforced by the government. Before this change, Wayne State was one of the leaders in attracting international exchange students. Numbers since 2001 of faculty include: 80 full-time faculty members and 2920 undergraduate and graduate students (1365 undergraduates and 1555 graduates). More than 75% of Wayne State engineering graduates are employed in the state of Michigan.

Engineering Programs

The Wayne State University College of Engineering offers both undergraduate degree programs as well as graduate degree programs. The College of Engineering is divided into two categories: Engineering and Engineering Technology. Under the first category of engineering, eight specific programs are available which are the following: Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and as of Fall 2010, Biomedical Engineering. The second category, which is Engineering Technology, offers Bachelor of Science degrees for undergraduate students and Master of Science degrees for the graduate students. Listed below are each programs of engineering in more detail.

Biomedical Engineering

The College of Engineering offers to the biomedical engineering students the capability to explore and solve biology and medicine problems, as well as providing the overall improvement of health care. There are 5 main specialties: bioinstrumentation, biomaterials, biomechanics, medical imaging, and orthopedic surgery.

Chemical Engineering & Materials Science

In the chemical engineering & materials science program students are taught to design and process new chemical technologies and materials to make goods used in people’s daily life.

Civil Engineering

In the civil engineering program, the College of Engineering offers the opportunity for students to learn about metropolitan maturation and design everyday structures, like airports, bridges, buildings, dams, roads, tunnels, sewage and water supply systems, surface and groundwater pollution. Additionally, it teaches students how civil engineers could oversee on construction site locations. The civil engineering department introduces the main four specialties of civil engineering, which are construction, environment, structural and transportation for the undergraduate students.

Computer Engineering

In the computer engineering program, the College of Engineering teaches undergraduate and graduate students the meaning of “Hi-Tech”. The computer engineering department trains undergraduate students in computer, energy conversion systems, electric power systems, and electronic controls.

Computer Science

The computer science department offers core academic strength in many areas including artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, data mining and machine learning, networking, databases, distributed and parallel computing, security, computer graphics and visualizations, and software engineering.

Electrical Engineering

The electrical engineering department gives the opportunity to undergraduate students to learn the mains areas of electrical engineering to prepare for the real world. Like fiber optics, lasers, and solid state devices.

Environmental Engineering

The environmental department of the College of Engineering offers two of the world’s main environmental laboratories just minutes away; which are Metro Detroit and the Great Lakes. Also, the college of engineering gives few of the main environmental internships to undergraduate students on recycling, public health issues, and air pollution control.

Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

The College of Engineering introduces how the industrial engineering helps our economy and what they do. The industrial engineers develop supervision direct systems to help in economic development and cost analysis, design manufacture planning and control systems to organize activities. Also, industrial engineers make sure manufactured goods, salary administration systems, and job estimate programs run efficiently. Also associated with Industrial Engineering at Wayne State is the Manufacturing Engineering program which teaches students how to test and design many manufacturing systems and to rebuild materials for life cycling. Also, the manufacturing program teaches how to understand the force of quality, cost and suitability measurements on exceptional manufacturing performance. The College introduces the three main areas of Manufacturing Engineering: computer manufacturing, integrated product engineering, and quality engineering.

Mechanical Engineering

The mechanical engineering program offers the undergraduate students the opportunity to work on electric generators, engines, power-producing machines, steam and gas turbines. The college gives opportunities to students who wish to expand on their knowledge of design, research, test tools, and many other mechanical devices. The college of engineering offers a lot of internship and co-ops for mechanical engineering.

Research/ Findings

At $254 million spent annually on research expenditures, Wayne State ranks among the nation's top universities for research according to the National Science Foundation. Additionally, Wayne State is among only 3.6 percent of the nation's universities with an RU/VH (Research Universities, Very high research activity) classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of teaching. Few of the many research discoveries are:

• Wayne state research has developed thermal images used on airplanes to detect tiny fissures in the body of the plane.

• Bioengineering has conducted tests on human impact tolerances, which has influenced the following safety features: seatbelts, air bags, safety barriers, and helmets.

• The Chemical Engineering program has fabricated prototype blood vessels from poly saccarhides (biomaterials that are an emerging class in several biomedical fields such as tissue regeneration, particularly for cartilage, drug delivery devices and gelentrapment systems for the immobilization of cells. Important properties of the polysaccharides include controllable biological activity, biodegradability, and their ability to form hydrogels) which are found in crab shells. These are used for developing replacements which are more effective than grafting for damaged human blood vessels.

• The researchers in the College of Engineering are using synthetic stem cells (a cell that upon division replaces its own numbers and also gives rise to cells that differentiate further into one or more specialized types, as various B cells and T cells) to help human immune systems fight bone cancer.

References

• Academic Programs. COE Home. Wayne State University, 2010. Web. 23 May 2011.
• College History. COE Home. Wayne State Unviersity, 2010. Web. 23 May 2011.
• Degree Programs. COE Home. Wayne State University, 2010. Web. 23 May 2011.
• EET Program. Engineering Technology. Wayne State Unviersity, 2010. Web. 23 May 2011.
• Undergraduate Program. COE Home. Wayne State University. Web. 23 May 2011.
• polysaccharide. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved May 23, 2011, from Dictionary.com website
• stem cells. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved May 23, 2011, from Dictionary.com website