Coordinating board approves UNT College of Engineering

"Fantastic," was UNT President Norval Pohl's first comment on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's unanimous vote April 18 to authorize the establishment of a college of engineering at UNT.

"For the past 20 years we've felt that we needed an engineering program to be the comprehensive university we truly want to be. Now we are ready to move forward," he says.

The first phase of UNT's plans to get the engineering program started calls for transferring three departments from the College of Arts and Sciences. The Department of Engineering Technology; the Department of Computer Sciences, with its name changed to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; and the Department of Materials Science, with its name changed to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, will form the foundation of the UNT College of Engineering.

When it begins operations, the college will administer two new degrees — a bachelor of science and a master of science in computer engineering — along with existing degrees in the transferred and renamed departments. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology must accredit the new degrees by 2009.

According to Pohl, UNT's long-range goal is to develop a comprehensive college of engineering. "With this authorization from the coordinating board, we now are poised to assist the state in widening and deepening the pool of workers in the science, engineering and technology fields. Our new college of engineering will provide valuable research and developmental expertise to the Texas high-technology industries, and particularly to firms located in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the largest population center in Texas," he says.

Current plans are to admit the first UNT College of Engineering students for the 2003-04 academic year.

UNT is expecting to have 650 engineering students by 2007 and 1,250 engineering students by 2010.

The engineering school will occupy approximately 180,000 square feet of the 550,000 square feet available in the former Texas Instruments property located four miles from the main Denton campus, near the juncture of U.S. Highway 77 and Loop 288, just east of I-35.

Pohl estimates that renovation costs will be around $17 million and that laboratory equipment costs will be nearly $5 million.

In addition, the university immediately will begin seeking to recruit a dean for the new school.

UNT's long-term planning calls for developing complementary new programs in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.

BY RODDY WOLPER rwolper@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue

• Arts patrons give UNT College of Music $1.2 million gift
• Rogers' Story of North Texas updated
• MIT dean to speak at TAMS commencement
• Faculty Senate approves proposal about undergraduate admissions policy
• UNT faculty members offer seminars to local teachers
• Elm Fork Explorer's Camp planned this summer
• UNT professor aids in improving hospital food
• Springtime in Texas means keeping an eye on the sky

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