Mizzou’s College of Engineering has achieved many milestones in the past decade to prove its aggressive pursuit of advancement.
- The college enrollment is up 50% in 10 years and continues to grow about 8% annually with extraordinary students. With an enrollment now of over 3,000 students, their ACT average scores (both math and verbal) are over 27.5 and there are 54 Dean’s Scholars with ACT scores over 32. This is an exceptional achievement in a public University.
- College research expenditures have grown from about $2M/yr to about $30M/yr in about 10 years. Research programs are interdisciplinary with other Mizzou schools (e.g., Medical, Veterinary, Agriculture, Business, …) and have high impact within Missouri and the nation.
- Entrepreneurial emphasis has been placed on COE research, with several incubators started and centers of excellence established to propel research into viable commercial businesses. These enable Mizzou research to provide economic development for the community and state, as well as create jobs in a challenged economy.
- Student organizations and Teams have been created that provide them with broadened skills for the future: social, international, research, entrepreneurship, business, leadership, and cross-functional teamwork. Examples are: Engineers without Borders, Solar Car Team, Steel Bridge Team, Engineering Entrepreneurs, TigerGen Hydrogen Car, as well as various diversity programs and honor societies. {link: http://engineering.missouri.edu/student-organizations/ }
The COE Challenges and Needs
Despite the many advances the Mizzou College of Engineering has achieved, the resource challenges today are the most critical. The Missouri state budget for the University and subsequently COE has been declining due to the economic downturn. This factor combined with the 50% growth in enrollment over 10 years makes the budget-per-student critically challenging, and faculty demands in time and class size have therefore increased. These shortfalls in budget create hurdles for both the COE instructional and research programs.
To counteract these challenges, more funding is required and the COE is trying all alternatives with their alumni support:
- Continue to ask for state and MU funding support. Raising tuition is an option, as is limiting enrollment – an undesireable alternative.
- Augment resources through financial gifts, endowments, scholarships, grants and other donations from alumni, friends, corporations, and foundations
- Be entrepreneurial – create and grow new revenue sources via research commercialization
UMCOE Foundation Support
The Foundation endeavors to reward the COE’s outstanding faculty, staff, students and researchers for the advancements they have made and to alleviate the financial challenges the Mizzou Engineering school faces. By providing a tax-deductible conduit for our alumni, friends of COE and industry partners, the Foundation can apply contributions to the most critical needs that have fallen outside the budget boundaries. These contributions are applied to the main priorities identified by the COE as critical areas of shortfall: Faculty and Staff ; Facility Upgrades; and Education, Research & Entrepreneurship.