NOTE: This document was generated from the 1995-1997 UIUC Programs of Study. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, but be advised that requirements may have changed since this book was published. Errors may have also been introduced in the conversion to a WWW document. Thus for items of importance, it might be wise to seek confirmation from either the paper version or a live human being.
The mission of the College of Engineering is to meet society's needs through excellence in education, research, and service to the public. The educational program strives to instill in students the values, vision, and training necessary to develop excellent technical, leadership, and communication skills. Through classwork and extracurricular activities, the college promotes a philosophy that emphasizes professionalism and embraces lifelong learning.
The college pioneered an interdisciplinary approach to engineering instruction and research that has proven beneficial for the graduates of the program and for society. At the undergraduate level, this approach is demonstrated by the senior design project, which demands that the student concurrently apply technical skills, practical thinking, and communications and human relations skills. At the graduate level, most degrees earned are awarded to students whose research is supported within an interdisciplinary team.
The college recognizes teaching excellence and rewards outstanding teachers. The coveted Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence is given annually to an outstanding faculty member. Many faculty members have also received awards for their instructional excellence from their departments, the campus, and industry.
Advising students is a responsibility shared by the entire faculty. Each year, the college recognizes the dedication of its top advisers by awarding them the prestigious Andersen Consulting Award for Excellence in Advising. Because the student body is large, the college has developed a strong, well-organized system for advising students. Upon entering a department, all undergraduate students are assigned to a senior staff member who serves as their faculty adviser. Each department also has a senior adviser, who is accessible to the students at any time and who acts as a liaison between the department and the college. At the college level, deans in the Office of Academic Programs help students make academic decisions, set career goals, resolve academic and personal concerns, and find suitable career opportunities upon graduation. Shortly after being accepted for graduate studies, graduate students select their faculty adviser. Graduate students are guided through their thesis research and teaching activities by faculty members who work closely with them.
The college's research areas embrace the fundamental and the practical, addressing our society's need for solutions to today's problems and for new knowledge upon which tomorrow's achievements can be built. With separately budgeted research expenditures of more than $80 million, the college places among the top engineering research programs nationally.
Students at all levels receive practical benefits from the strong research environment created by the college's well-funded research activities and programs. Students have access to state-of-the-art equipment in classrooms and laboratories, and they are educated by faculty members who are investigating and working with some of today's most exciting technology. Many of the research groups offer undergraduate students the opportunity to actively participate in research projects.
The college's teaching and research laboratories are up-to-date and remain so through a program of continuous renewal. With the support and counsel of its industrial sponsors, the college is able to maintain many state-of-the-art undergraduate laboratories. Modern classroom facilities, many equipped with the latest computer and multimedia technology, create a learning environment that enhances the educational experience.
The college has three major interdisciplinary research laboratories: the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL), the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), and the Microelectronics Laboratory.
The Coordinated Science Laboratory provides an interdisciplinary research environment for faculty members and students from engineering and other disciplines. Research concentrates on such areas as semiconductor physics, semiconductor materials and devices, computer systems, communications, VLSI circuits, artificial intelligence, signal processing, supercomputing, and robotics.
The Materials Research Laboratory emphasizes multidisciplinary research basic to an understanding of the solid state of matter and is one of the country's outstanding facilities for electron microscopy and microanalysis of materials. The laboratory's four highly interdisciplinary research programs are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. They are metals and ceramics (DOE), solid-state sciences (DOE), materials science and engineering (NSF), and the Science and Technology Center for Superconductivity (NSF).
The Microelectronics Laboratory, which houses the National Science Foundation-sponsored Engineering Research Center for Compund Semiconductor Microelectronics, is a multidisciplinary facility for the investigation of new concepts in optical and electronic materials, devices, and systems based on gallium arsenide and other compund semiconductors. The laboratory includes special facilities for the development of artificially structured materials, submicron device fabrication, ultrahigh-speed optical and electrical measurements, and characterization of ultrahigh-purity semiconductors.
The Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Materials Research Laboratory cooperate in the operation of a multisystem molecular beam epitaxy facility called the EpiCenter. All three laboratories provide opportunities for researchers in industry and the University to collaborate on research projects.
Some unique research centers are part of the college. These include the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center, the Center for Computational Electronics, the Center for Laser-Aided Materials Processing, the Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development, the Institute for Competitive Manufacturing, the Knowledge-Based Engineering Systems Research Laboratory, the Manufacturing Research Center, and the Science and Technology Center for Cement-Based Composite Materials. These programs address special interdisciplinary needs in nationally important technological areas. They share the common goal of providing superior research capabilities in the fundamental engineering sciences in collaboration with industrial and governmental laboratories, supporting graduate student education, and enhancing rapid technology transfer from University laboratories to industry and the classroom.
A vast array of computing resources is available to students and faculty members. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications--developer of the powerful Internet browser, NCSA Mosiac--is a University-based supercomputing facility and interdisciplinary research center that makes available a range of supercomputer architectures. Vector multiprocessors include the four-processor CRAY Y-MP/464 and CRAY-2S/4-128 machines and the eight-processor CONVEX C3880. The CONVEX C3880 is the centerpiece of the Numerical Laboratory, where scientific visualizations can be performed interactively in real time. Massively parallel computers are two versions of Thinking Machines' Connection Machine, the CM-2 (32,768 processors) and the CM-5 (512 SPARC chip-based nodes). At the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, NCSA's Virtual Reality Laboratory allows users to enter a three-dimensional space, exploring data by being immersed in it. NCSA is now working with three other NSF supercomputer centers to form a National Computational Environment accessible anywhere on the national network.
The college is part of one of the most advanced campus networks in the nation. This network gives faculty members and students access to all central computing facilities and to regional and national networks. Shared by all undergraduate and graduate engineering students, the Engineering Workstations Laboratories are equipped with some of today's most advanced engineering workstations. Each workstation is a stand-alone computer with its own disk drive, memory and cpu, and file and resource sharing capabilities. The workstation platforms in the Engineering Workstations Laboratories are equipped with some of today's most advanced engineering workstations. Each workstation is a stand-alone computer with its own disk drive, memory and cpu, and file and resource sharing capabilities.
The state-of-the-art Grainger Engineering Library Information Center, completed in 1994, provides students, faculty, and the business community with an excellent environment for study, group collaborative projects, and casual reading. The Grainger Center houses 300,000 volumes of the University's 500,000-volume engineering collection; the collection is augmented by smaller collections in a number of departmental libraries. Its resources include a digital imaging laboratory, a computer and multimedia laboratory, instructional services laboratories, an information retrieval research laboratory, and high-tech classrooms. Using workstations located throughout the University's library system, patrons can access more than five million references to articles and journals.
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