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Overview
The Faculty
of Engineering at the University of Georgia is a new kind of engineering
school organized to capture the convergence of scientific and engineering
disciplines. Unlike conventional engineering schools where faculty members
are appointed to an engineering department, UGA engineering faculty in
the Faculty of Engineering are housed in academic units throughout campus.
In addition, engineering faculty at other universities and engineers in
the private sector are encouraged to participate in the Faculty of Engineering.
This innovative
interdisciplinary approach to engineering increases opportunity for learning,
research and outreach at the confluence of disciplines, giving rise to
new but pervasive fields like pharmaceutical engineering, metabolic engineering,
marine engineering, ecological engineering, information engineering and
biological engineering. Academic programs emerging in this environment
adopt an educational approach that gives engineering students broader
learning experiences and prepares them for careers devoted to the integration
of discoveries from multiple disciplines. The programs graduate engineers
with liberal arts backgrounds. The use-inspired research paradigm that
emerges out of the collaboration between science and engineering leads
to the development of products and services that are relevant to the needs
of society. The engineering outreach programs enhance economic development
and quality of life for Georgians, and prepare them to be global leaders
in science, technology, education and sustainable development.
The Faculty
of Engineering is a new and daring experiment. The unconventional approach
to organizing a major discipline is unique and may be the first of its
kind at a research university in the United States. It employs principles
of entrepreneurship, boundarylessness, networking and life-long learning
to create a learning organization that is responsive to unpredictability
and adoptive of opportunity.
The development
of high quality, relevant programs in engineering at UGA will not only
serve the University and its students, but the state of Georgia and a
changing world.
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