Well, we broke another record this fall—reaching an undergraduate enrollment of 870 students in the mechanical and nuclear engineering (MNE) department! The trend over the last five years in undergraduate enrollment is shown in the chart below. In addition, we now have 63 graduate students, a number we are working to increase significantly over the coming years. To help us deal with this growth, we have active searches ongoing for three new faculty members and we will soon advertise two new staff positions. I am delighted to say that our search committees have done great jobs and we are interviewing eight very promising candidates to fill these new faculty positions. I expect to introduce some new faculty members to you in our next newsletter.
Our new dean of the college, Darren Dawson, has hit the ground running. He is a “numbers man” and is pushing all the departments to establish goals and strategies to achieve them. One of my stated goals is to increase the number of Ph.D. students from 27 last year and 30 this year, to at least 50 in 2019. This is required if our department is to do its part in realizing the 2025 Vision that President Kirk Schulz has established. In order for K-State to become a top 50 public research institution by 2025, the College of Engineering goal is to increase its Ph.D. enrollment up to 310. The MNE Department accounts for, by most measures, about 25% of the College of Engineering. This means that we must have about 78 Ph.D. students in our program by 2025. This is an ambitious goal for us because we must also deal with the increasing undergraduate enrollments, but your MNE Department is prepared to meet the challenges.
In this newsletter, you will read about some of the significant awards and achievements of our students and our faculty. Mo Hosni, professor and former department head, was recognized as K-State’s International Educator of the Year. Also, Professor Douglas McGregor received his third R&D 100 award in his 12 years here. This is an astounding achievement. I hope you will enjoy reading about these and other accomplishments of members of our department. And I also hope you will feel free to visit us anytime you can.
Bill Dunn, Professor and Department Head
Steven M. and Kay L. Theede Chair in Engineering
dunn@k-state.edu
If you would like to support the department of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kansas State University, please visit the donation page at http://goo.gl/bVS7wr.