Texas A&M University

WELCOME FROM THE DEAN

This is a time of growth and renewal at Texas A&M University.

This is a time of transition as we shift our focus from expansion to further heightening the quality of our academic and research programs. As we enter our final year of the faculty reinvestment plan initiated by then-President Robert M. Gates, we have hired more than 100 new faculty at all levels, in all disciplines, as promised. We have built up our signature programs. We are also growing our undergraduate and graduate student enrollment to 10,000. We are now in a planning mode, instead of a tactical one, for we are now consumed with a new challenge: How do we manage and sustain this growth?

We are still “thinking big,” but our focus now is in terms of the quality of our programs, in making sure we prepare the engineers and entrepreneurs of the future. We know our areas of strength — energy, water, materials, nanotechnology and biotechnology. We must now determine where best to invest our resources to have major impact on our focus areas and on the quality of our engineering education in general.

President Gates understood the importance of engineering to the future of this country and was a strong supporter of this college. I am shocked and awed by all we have done in just a few short years. No other engineering program has seen such immense growth, and no other engineering programs have challenges and opportunities as great as we do.
We have seen an exponential explosion of knowledge in Texas A&M Engineering, and we are still going strong. Our graduates are in great demand because the quality of engineers we produce is so high. So we now turn our focus to ensuring the success of Texas A&M Engineering by planning for the future. Education is why we’re here. Our business is knowledge as we impart current thinking through our teaching and add to the body of knowledge through our research. These are indeed exciting times for Texas A&M Engineering.