College of Engineering appoints its new dean and is primed to make Nebraska a big name in the Big Ten.
By Charlyne Berens ('05, '10)
Illustration by Aleksandar Savić
We all know engineers build roads and bridges. And buildings. Infrastructure.
They’re good at physics and math, and their work requires that they be exacting, meticulous. Admirable, for sure, but a little remote? Sort of off in their own world?
Hardly. At the College of Engineering Senior Design Showcase prior to May graduation, you would have seen 49 presentations including a miniature car designed by biosystems engineering majors for 3- to 5-year-olds with disabilities.
A chemical engineering student from Malaysia talked about how her team tweaked the process for making a material used in the plastics industry to make it friendlier to the environment.
An electrical and computer engineering major explained how his team invented a monitor that helps mechanize the work of Big Red Worms, a vermicomposting firm in Lincoln that develops environmentally friendly fertilizer.
Faculty research is just as diverse: gene therapy; road and bridge safety; cybersecurity protocols and technology; advances in natural resources practices; additive manufacturing; the nation’s only tractor test lab.
Engineering is not just infrastructure. In fact, says Lance C. Pérez, newly named dean of the College of Engineering, engineers are in every corner of people’s lives. “Engineering is fundamentally about improving the human condition,” Pérez said.
Greg Hyslop, a 1980 grad now the chief technology officer at Boeing, put it this way: “Engineers are the creatives, always creating something new that will help people.”
Nancy Melby, a 2005 graduate who is now vice president and director of operations at Leo A Daly in Omaha, agreed: “Engineering is geared toward solving problems; any sort of problems.”
From medical devices to cell phones and computers, to bridges and highways and buildings and all the way to outer space, “everything people touch is engineered,” said Pam Dingman, a 1991 civil engineering grad who has held the elected office of County Engineer for Lancaster County since 2013.
University Priority
Engineering was a part of the land grant mission, and engineering classes — mostly what would be called civil engineering today — were part of the Nebraska curriculum from the start. In 1884, engineering became part of the Industrial College along with agriculture and other sciences, according to UNL archives. By the 1890s, as cities rushed to adopt electric lighting, electrical engineering was one of the most popular programs on campus. And by 1909, engineering became a college unto itself.
Now, Nebraska Engineering — the only engineering college in the state — is one of the university’s priority programs, with a plan for growth, even as the budget tightens.
“We’re doing it because the demand is there for more engineering graduates” who contribute in myriad ways to the state’s economy, said Chancellor Ronnie Green. “There’s a demand for well-trained engineers in all these fields,” both in the state and elsewhere in the nation.
Besides preparing tomorrow’s engineers, Pérez said, the research the college faculty and students do creates new technologies, new jobs — even new industries. The college, he said, is critical to the economic development of the state.
Pérez, who joined the electrical and computer engineering faculty in 1996, also spent some time in the university’s administration, serving as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and head of graduate studies between 2010 and 2016. For the past two years he was interim dean of engineering and was appointed permanent dean last spring. “It’s like coming home,” he said with a smile.
Green is glad he’s there and said he is excited about Pérez’ leadership. “I’m very optimistic about the college’s future,” the chancellor said.
Helping the university transition to the Big Ten was part of Pérez’ duties in the vice chancellor’s office. It’s been a good move, he said: Becoming part of the prestigious conference “is a concrete statement about our aspirations. We wanted to be a better, stronger university.”
Approved by the Board of Regents in August, the $75 million project will create and update spaces in the Scott Engineering Center and the Link.
Even closer to home, the Big Ten has “without question the best collection of colleges of engineering” along with Stanford, MIT and a few other renowned programs. While Nebraska’s ranking is currently at the bottom of the group, “We’re at the table with the best,” Pérez said. “That means we’re going to be a different college.”
The college has added more than 60 faculty since 2014, some new and some to fill slots opened by retirements. And enrollment is at an all-time high with more than 3,100 undergraduates in 12 majors and 650 graduate students. The college offers academic programs on City Campus and East Campus in Lincoln and on Scott Campus in Omaha where students are “dual citizens.” A unique partnership with the University of Nebraska Omaha means those students are enrolled in the College of Engineering’s courses offered in Omaha and also take their general courses at UNO.
Space
All that growth raises the need to add space and to renovate the college’s existing venues. Othmer Hall, the face of the City Campus engineering complex, was built in 2002, but it connects to much older buildings: Nebraska Hall — which many remember as the old Elgin watch factory — acquired by the university in 1958; Scott Engineering Center, built in 1972; and the Scott Engineering link, added in 1986.
“We need world-class facilities,” Pérez said, and the facilities the college has now are not it.
It’s not just his opinion; a formal study by the NU system made that determination. A legislative bill in 2015 allotted $200 million for capital improvements to the university, and administrators designated $70 million of that for the College of Engineering, Green said. It will go toward renovations of the existing buildings, a project that should be completed by 2022 and will be focused on improving the college’s research mission.
Expansion is the next step. “We will be raising $85 million for a new building,” to center on the undergraduate experience, Pérez said. The new structure will attach to Othmer Hall on the east and will occupy part of what is now 17th Street as well as the surface parking lot on 17th and Vine, former home of a gas station and convenience store.
Construction on the new building will begin as soon as sufficient funds have been raised. The new and improved spaces will provide more and better faculty and student labs and equipment, more spaces for collaboration and interaction and more room for student services.
Collaboration has long been an important part of the engineering curriculum. Dingman, the Lancaster County engineer, said she clearly remembers how her courses in the late 1980s emphasized working in teams, which is exactly what engineers do in their careers. Furthermore, “many of those relationships last a lifetime,” she said.
Teamwork is still a major focus of an engineering degree, but the college has expanded on that fundamental to create the Complete Engineer Initiative. The engineering courses equip graduates with a solid technical skill set, Pérez said, “but they need more than that to be successful.”
The complete engineer also needs nontechnical skills, he said, and the initiative is built on six competencies: teamwork, intercultural appreciation, leadership, self-management, service and civic responsibility, and engineering ethics.
The college has been developing the co-curricular initiative for about six years and is now ready to ensure it becomes fully institutionalized. “We’re emerging as a national leader” in this regard, Pérez said. “And we’ve had tremendous support from Nebraska industry.”
Industry/Economic Impact
Meeting the demands of engineering-related industries in Nebraska and across the nation is a major driver behind the college’s push to grow and improve. The university recognizes the far-reaching economic impact the college and its graduates have.
Lots of businesses in the state and nation recruit at Nebraska, Pérez said, looking for civil engineers, construction engineers, designers and more. About 40 percent of those who take jobs after their undergrad degrees stay in the state.
The demand for new engineering and architecture grads in Nebraska is expected to grow by 9.2 percent by 2020 and more than 10 percent nationally, according to a study by the Nebraska Department of Labor. Those grads won’t all be building bridges and roads or even the next generation of computers.
“An engineering major is increasingly becoming the foundation for more than an engineering career,” Pérez said. For example, engineering and medicine are becoming more integrated, and a fair number of grads go on to med school. Others go on to earn MBAs or law degrees. “Engineering is the pathway to many careers,” the dean said.
And that increases the college’s reach. Hyslop said, “Every branch of engineering will influence the economy one way or another.” Scientists, he said, are answering the “why” questions; engineers in every field are answering the “how.”
Melby agreed: “Engineering is geared toward solving problems, any sort of problems. It could relate to the design of a product or the process of making it.”
In Nebraska, Hyslop said, where agriculture is a major economic force, engineers are offering innovative help in areas like artificial intelligence, data science and data analytics. “Those kinds of skills in the digital world are going to play a big role,” he said, spinning off numerous technologies for and from agriculture that could create an exciting future for the state.
In fact, the agricultural engineering program, situated on East Campus, is ranked in the top 10 in the nation, Green said. The architectural engineering program, situated at the Durham School in Omaha, is also highly regarded. And material science within the mechanical and materials engineering program is nationally recognized, the chancellor added.
“There’s a lot of really amazing work that’s done in the engineering college,” he said.
Still to come
The work isn’t finished, of course. As is the rest of the university, the engineering college is working to add more women and people of color to its student body. The number of women is not many more than when Dingman and Melby were students: about 17 percent.
Though both women remember being treated as well as their male counterparts, “We’d like that percentage to be much higher,” Pérez said. “If we want to be excellent, we need more diversity.”
For one thing, the college is talking about some curricular revisions that could make the degree more attractive to a broader set of students.
In addition, the college has added a multicultural engineering program this fall. “Students can opt into it,” Pérez said, and take advantage of some programming throughout the school year that will enhance their chance for success. The college will add a similar program for women in engineering in 2019.
Then there’s the fact that this is the only engineering college in Nebraska. Pérez said he believes that arrangement is in the best interest of the state, but it means his college has to serve various constituencies however it can best do that.
While the academic center of the university is in Lincoln, “we have a strong presence in Omaha because of the industry there,” the dean said.
The college also has a “two-plus-two” program with the University of Nebraska Kearney, allowing students to take their first two years of coursework at UNK and then transfer seamlessly into the engineering college. A similar arrangement with Wayne State College is just getting underway.
"We're at the table with the best. That means we're going to be a different college." -Lance Pérez
The college will celebrate its 110th birthday in 2019, but it’s still focused on building an even stronger future. The university administration supports it: “Lots of amazing work is already done there,” Green said. “We want to grow it.”
The dean and faculty continue to focus on their primary goals: to provide tomorrow’s workforce for existing companies and to create new technologies that create new jobs.
As Pérez points out, engineering in general has some substantial laurels on which it could rest:
Engineers invented the automobile — and built the roads to drive it on.
They figured out how to give Americans a clean water supply.
They developed the computer, the cell phone, digital photography.
They have made life-saving advances in health care.
They have increased the worldwide food supply.
But here, the engineers aren’t resting. They’re still working on their fundamental premise: improving the human condition.
“That’s what we’re about,” Pérez said.