National Ranking Reflects Quality of Lehigh Engineering

Lehigh’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science (RCEAS) has been ranked 12th in a first-ever survey of U.S. graduate engineering programs by The Princeton Review.

	David Wu: progress in engineering

The survey, which is the result of a two-year study, rates the nation’s top 20 graduate schools of engineering according to quantitative criteria that include GRE scores, undergraduate GPA, percentage of applicants accepted, and percentage of top undergraduates applying.

S. David Wu, Iacocca Professor and Dean of the RCEAS, said he was pleased with Lehigh’s rank in the new survey.

“This survey reflects the progress we have made as we strive to deliver the highest-quality education to our students while we significantly raise the national stature of our research and scholarship,” said Wu. “We are continuing with major initiatives to improve our research infrastructure and our commitment to teaching, and to cluster our intellectual areas for growth and greater external recognition.”

Close contact with faculty, a flexible curriculum and the chance to interact with industry are among the RCEAS’s most attractive attributes, graduate students say. Also important are opportunities to conduct research, publish their results, and travel to conferences to give presentations.

	Ryan Deacon: leveraging facilities, faculty expertise, and industry partnerships

Ryan Deacon, who received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering in 2007, says the RCEAS graduate program has enabled him to conduct high-level research into power plants.

“One of the most rewarding aspects of my graduate research is knowing that the results of my work will have an important impact on how coal combustion power plants are built and operated,” says Deacon.

“Lehigh is one of the few places where I can conduct this research, since it requires electron microscopy and other surface analysis techniques. The multitude of electron microscopes here, and the experience and knowledge of the faculty and staff, have been instrumental in the experiments I’ve carried out.

“Our faculty’s relationships with industry and national labs have also been very beneficial, allowing me to spend a summer internship at a prestigious national lab. The work I performed there was a great experience that provided me with several networking opportunities.”

Dissolving Boundaries

“I think one of the things that sets Lehigh apart is an emphasis on interdisciplinary research,” says Hannah Dailey, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Ph.D. candidate.

	Grad student Hannah Dailey and Professor Samir Ghadiali examine a lung cell imaged by Lehigh’s computational biofluid mechanics lab.

“My degree will be in mechanical engineering but my group collaborates with students and professors in physics and biological sciences. We apply engineering principles and tools to biological systems. People are always surprised when I tell them I am a mechanical engineer doing computational modeling of lung cells.

“My experience is just one example of the many interdisciplinary projects going on here. Lehigh engineers aren’t allowed to get comfortable in the traditional confines of their discipline. Our students and faculty are constantly blurring the lines between fields, pushing themselves into new and exciting areas, and drawing on the strengths of those around them. It’s a very exciting process.”

Ties to Industry

Gene Tkachenko, who received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1995, said he benefited greatly from working with industry while studying at Lehigh.

“I believe that the strength of Lehigh’s graduate program in engineering is in its close collaboration with industry,” says Tkachenko, who is now senior director of engineering at Skyworks Solutions Inc., a Massachusetts-based international company that makes high-performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors for mobile connectivity.

	Gene Tkachenko: Leveraging Lehigh’s industry connections

“This collaboration not only prepares students well for the real world workplace,” says Tkachenko, “but it also gives them exposure to the latest developments in technology and equips them to advance the state of the art. Working with semiconductor devices from companies like Texas Instruments, Raytheon and Skyworks while at Lehigh helped me tremendously to transition smoothly from the academic world to the wireless semiconductor industry.

“Another obvious part of Lehigh’s success is the strong academic curriculum, along with engineering labs that are equipped with the most modern characterization instrumentation and computer-aided design software.”

Lehigh was the highest-ranked engineering Pennsylvania school in the Princeton Review survey and the only school in the state to finish in the top 20.

The RCEAS enrolls 565 graduate students and maintains a student-to-faculty ratio of 5:1. The college offers master’s and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, environmental engineering, industrial engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, computational and engineering mechanics, and polymer science and engineering.

Master’s-level degrees are offered in analytical finance, business administration and engineering, information and systems engineering, management science, manufacturing systems engineering, photonics, quality engineering, and wireless communications and network engineering.

More on the survey can be found by visiting http://www.princetonreview.com/grad/research/articles/find/engineering.asp

     

P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
Lehigh University • Packard Laboratory, 19 Memorial Drive West, Bethlehem, PA 18015 • (610) 758-4025