The Bicentennial Strategic Plan, approved in December, stated IU’s intent to explore the establishment of an engineering program at IU-Bloomington.
Of the 62 universities in the Association of American Universities, only four do not have programs in engineering, according to the plan. Of those four, two have joint programs in engineering with other ?institutions.
A report released by Battelle, a nonprofit research and development organization, recommended that IU design an engineering ?program at IU-Bloomington.
In response, the plan stated IU’s intent to appoint an external blue ribbon review committee to assess the feasibility of establishing an engineering program at ?IU-Bloomington.
Bobby Schnabel, the School of Informatics and Computing dean, presented the proposal for the new engineering program.
Schnabel said he sees three reasons to establish an engineering program at IU-Bloomington: to support the economic health of the state, to remove constraints from existing campus science programs and to remain in good standing with the Association of American Universities. Without medicine or engineering programs, he said, it is difficult to remain in good standing with the AAU.
The external blue ribbon review committee has proposed that IU establish an engineering program, placed under the School of Informatics and Computing and focused on small-scale technologies rather than large-scale artifacts.
The engineering program would focus on bioengineering, computer engineering, cyber-physical systems, environmental engineering, molecular and nanoscale engineering and ?neuro-engineering.
The foundational elements associated with these focus areas include control theory, information theory, big data, computational modeling, signal processing, intelligent systems, user interface design, sensors and instrumentation and mobile computing devices ?and hardware.
The committee has proposed that IU launch a bachelor of science in engineering and a doctoral degree in engineering by fall 2016 and master of science in engineering by fall 2017.
To establish such an engineering program, the committee has stated IU will require between 20 and 25 new core engineering faculty members, as well as 25,000 square feet to support roughly 125 undergraduate students and 125 graduate students.
“The number of alumni who have come to me over the years and said that ‘I was an engineering student at Purdue, and if IU had had an engineering program, I certainly would’ve come to Bloomington,’” ?Schnabel said.
Ilana Gershon, Department of Communication and Culture associate professor; Jon Simons, Department of Communication and Culture associate professor; and Cassidy Sugimoto, School of Informatics and Computing assistant professor also presented a proposed policy on the creation, reorganization, elimination and merger of academic units and ?programs, or CREM.
“We wanted a clear process, instead of having constant crisis management, which is how many people felt the reorganizations had been going previously,” ?Gershon said.
University, campus or school administrators; faculty governance bodies and a CREM standing committee, the interested parties, may initiate a CREM, informing the CREM standing committee of its interest in initiating a CREM.
The CREM standing committee must then determine whether the CREM falls under the jurisdiction of an individual school or under the CREM standing committee.
The interested parties must also make a prima facie case explaining why the CREM is considered both desirable and feasible. If all interested parties accept the prima facie case, the provost, or the deans of the individual schools, and the faculty of the individual schools will appoint an external expert committee, which will make recommendations on ?the CREM.
Should the CREM standing committee decide to proceed with the CREM, it will form an internal implementation committee, which will produce a ?comprehensive plan.
Faculty eligible to vote, determined by the CREM standing committee, will then vote on the final plan. If two-thirds of the faculty with voting eligibility vote to approve the final plan, it will then be sent to the BFC.
If the BFC votes to approve the final plan, it will then be sent to the IU Board of Trustees for final approval.
The proposed policy has not yet been approved.
