The Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s approval of an engineering program at Indiana University Bloomington paves the way for degree tracks to be offered starting next fall.
Starting with the 2016-17 academic year, the program — to be housed at IUB’s School of Informatics and Computing — will offer degrees in intelligent systems engineering. Initially the program will offer bachelor’s and doctoral degrees, with a master’s degree proposal soon to be developed.
The bachelor’s program will offer degree tracks in computer engineering, cyber-physical systems, bioengineering and molecular/nanoscale engineering. The doctoral program will focus on these areas as well as environmental and neuro-engineering. Central to this focused program will be the engineering and design of small, mobile, personal technologies that integrate big data, computational modeling and intelligent systems into their design.
“This program, steeped in the campus’s longstanding strengths in the sciences and technology, will allow us to better prepare our students for the high-demand jobs of the future and more fully support Indiana’s entrepreneurial culture and economic competitiveness.”
— IU President Michael McRobbie
Approved by IU trustees in April, the program is an integral part of the Bicentennial Strategic Plan for Indiana University, which calls for the university to support a culture of building and making.
It was created in response to 1). a need to train additional engineers in southwest central Indiana to support major employers such as Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center, Cook Group and Cummins Inc. and 2). to help attract new industry to the region. Such needs were expressed in a 2014 economic development study for southwest central Indiana. The study cited the lack of engineering at IU Bloomington as a limiting factor to the region’s future economic growth and called on IU Bloomington to “expand and/or develop offerings in applied sciences, including engineering.”