The U’s undergraduate engineering program rose from 57th to 56th in the nation based on peer assessment surveys conducted for 152 U.S. engineering colleges that offer doctorate degrees. The college has steadily moved up from 70th place since 2008.
“It is gratifying to see the quality of our programs constantly improving and to see that they are being recognized for that by ranking organizations,” said Richard Brown, dean of the U’s College of Engineering.
Meanwhile, the University of Utah itself rose in the same survey from No. 129 to No. 115.
The U’s College of Engineering is Utah’s premier research institution for engineers and computer scientists and is made up of seven departments and six multi-disciplinary academic programs.
In 2015, the College was ranked 37th in the nation in research expenditures with $77.6 million in funding. It also has 188 tenure-track faculty members, a 71 percent increase since 2002. Also this year, the College awarded 876 undergraduate and graduate degrees, a 16 percent increase from the year before.
“While the number of graduates in our programs has more than doubled in the past decade, the quality of our student body, based upon ACT scores and high school GPAs, has consistently increased,” Brown said. “Engineering students at the U get a PAC-12 education for a tuition that is less than half the median tuition among public PAC-12 schools.”