Engineers solve problems, and there are many great problems that require bold, creative and innovative solutions. As an educational institution, Duke and Pratt should prepare our students to address the complex problems associated with a growing and global society. Pratt’s mission is to prepare the most talented students in the world to solve important problems and through research provide a fundamental understanding of their underlying, systematic behavior.
Our vision is that such an engineering education integrates the great cultural subjects (biological and physical sciences, mathematics, history, political science, social science, engineering and the arts and humanities) within a rigorous, accredited engineering curriculum that also stresses discovery and experiential learning through hands-on laboratory instruction, team-based project classes and engineering competitions and independent research supervised by the world’s best faculty and staff. It is this kind of learning environment that will prepare our students with the intellectual agility to contribute to the betterment of our global society, while enjoying productive and rewarding lives in their chosen careers.
Our goal is to be recognized as among the most distinguished schools of engineering, combining outstanding undergraduate and graduate teaching programs and superb research, thereby strengthening Duke University’s overall brand and solidifying Duke’s position among the very best universities in the world.
To succeed in carrying out our mission, realizing our vision, and achieving our goal, we will need to change the way engineering education is traditionally taught throughout the world. We need to do three things well:
- Incorporate the great cultural subjects in our curriculum;
- Provide opportunities for experiential learning;
- Focus our research on solving big problems that require teams of researchers to solve, thus making an impact by our collective and coherent action.
We need to make these points our clear priorities for the next five years. If we can do these three things better than anyone else, we will be the most distinguished undergraduate school of engineering in the world.
In terms of quantitative metrics used to rank graduate programs (which has a positive influence on our undergraduate ranking as well), we will need to achieve these four goals in order to be recognized among the top graduate programs in engineering:
- Double our research expenditures from approximately $35M to $70M.
- Double the size of our master’s graduate program and increase our PhD students to more than 400.
- Recruit (or have inducted) several more National Academy of Engineering members.
- Promote our accomplishments in engineering research, education and outreach.
To achieve these goals we will need to make these tactical investments:
- Hire fifteen to twenty outstanding NAE or potential NAE faculty. Invest five of these faculty lines in the existing departmental disciplines, and the rest in emerging fields and our research initiatives in materials, environmental systems, photonics, nanomedicine and implantable devices, global health.
- Build infrastructure (80,000 net assignable square feet) and staff to support the doubling of our research expenditures, and our teaching and service mission. The proposed research initiatives, our rapidly expanding Master’s programs, and the experiential, hands-on learning laboratories for our undergraduate courses, team-based projects and competitions and independent research will require at least this investment.
- Finish the upfit of the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences including the Shared Materials Infrastructure Nanofabrication Facility, the bioengineering initiative research space, and the first year engineering innovation instructional courses space.
Strategic Priorities
Research. During the next five to seven years, we plan to hire 15 to 20 new faculty which should help us to double our research expenditures thus increasing our impact. Our recruitment strategy will focus on attracting the rising “stars” at the advanced assistant professor, associate professor or full professor level. We will continue to hire faculty in our four, cross-School strategic initiatives (material science, nanomedicine, photonics, environmental system engineering initiatives) that overlap and support the University-wide initiatives in imaging, global health, earth and ocean science and engineering, and materials. The interdisciplinary leaders of these initiatives have been tasked with choosing important problems to research that are uniquely suited for Pratt to explore and whose solution will have a major impact on the field, industry and society.
Undergraduate Curriculum and Education. We need to completely restructure the engineering curriculum to start with problem-focused courses in the freshman year, and integrate liberal arts, experiential learning opportunities and independent research in themes that are aligned with our strategic research initiatives. The facilities for teaching our upper division laboratories that accompany each course in our curriculum are woefully inadequate. Through our curricular revision efforts of the past five years, our laboratories are beginning to integrate lecture and laboratory assignments to provide hands-on experiential learning opportunities for our students, while requiring students to gain skills in subjects that will allow them to be leaders in research, corporate, government or nonprofit industries. Finally, as the size of the student body grows (undergraduates by 25% and graduate students by over 50%), we recognize that our student/faculty ratio will increase. This will make it challenging to provide the kind of individual advising and career mentoring we pride ourselves on giving, particularly in our larger majors such as biomedical engineering.
Infrastructure. The space, administrative staff and IT support for Pratt personnel has been historically very limited. The opening of the 322,000 sq. ft, $97M Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (FCIEMAS) has been a tremendous boost to the quantity and quality of research space available to Pratt. However, as we increase the faculty, staff and student body we will need to:- Finish the Shared Materials Infrastructure Facility (SMIF), and characterization labs on the first floor of the Fitzpatrick Center (West Wing) as well as the basement of the East wing to support the bioengineering and curriculum revision initiatives. We estimate the cost of upfitting these two spaces to be an additional $20M dollar investment.
- Construct 80,000 net assignable sq. ft to house the Engineering Design Center, (EXCEL Building) expand our research in the core disciplines and the cross-school initiatives (materials science, nanomedicine, photonics, environmental solutions) and to support the planned expansion of the undergraduate class (by 200 net students) the master of engineering management program (doubling in five years) and the increase in PhD students and postdoctoral fellows that will be derived from programs established by the 20 to 30 new faculty hires.
In addition to physical infrastructure, Pratt is in need of additional administrative staff and technical support staff for IT and teaching laboratory support, and grant preparation and general administrative assistance for our faculty. In order to achieve our goal to be recognized as a distinguished school of engineering, we need to be able to support our faculty, students and staff at the level that will allow them to compete with the very best universities in the world.
Graduate Program
We aim to increase our graduate student program in the next five to seven years by doubling our master’s students to over 200 students and increasing our PhDs to more than 400 students. In addition, we will continue to increase the quality as evidenced by increasing the average GRE scores to over 750 and being more selective (reducing our acceptance to application ratio to less than 20%).
International Partnerships and Collaborations
A distinguished school requires recognition beyond our immediate borders. Partnerships and collaborations with other countries allow us to learn about other cultures, and problem solving methods that will help us attain our goals and ambitions. Our students will benefit greatly from the enhanced cultural appreciation and respect gained from study abroad and or international research collaborations. In the next five years we need to:
- Form an international bioengineering partnership with a prominent university or universities in Asia.
- Grow our photonics and material sciences initiatives into international institutes
- Establish a school for educating women in engineering in the Middle East.
- Achieve a goal of nearly 50% of our engineering students participating in substantive study abroad programs (with new partners in Asia and Europe identified).
- Continue to support Engineers without Borders, Engineering World Health and MEM programs to expand our global outreach.
Outreach and Visibility
In order to publicize our accomplishments and thereby help identify Pratt to the outside academic and industrial opinion leaders, we plan to:
- Create a Pratt distinguished lecture series
- Provide travel funds for faculty to lecture internationally
- Host more regional, national and international meetings at Duke
- Incorporate outreach in the annual scholarly activities report and review process
- Continue to publicize our activities through the Dean’s memo, the monthly Pratt Press, the bi-annual DukEngineer, the annual Pratt Progress Report and the annual Department Newsletters.
- Promote our students for Rhodes, Fulbright, Marshall, Goldwater, Postgraduate, NSF and other prestigious fellowships and recognition awards.
- Initiate three fellows of research society nominations per year for the next five years per discipline or department.
- Make two faculty nominations per year for national society awards.
- Facilitate the nomination of two faculty per year for five years to the NAE.
We believe that our success in translating research advances into new products, processes and spinoff companies also assists in bringing recognition and good visibility to our engineering school and to the university. Over the next five years, the following goals in entrepreneurship will be achieved:
- Renew the Coulter translational program in engineering medicine;
- Enhance the MEM program by developing entrepreneurial classes and real-world product design cases into the curriculum
- Provide an institutional focus for entrepreneurship at Duke
- Foster the culture of entrepreneurship at Duke through the Duke Startup Challenge and by coordinating the many cross-school programs that exist that touch on this area of intellectual activity.
- Work with inventors to spinout ten new companies.
Development/Finance
In order to fund these School priorities, we have developed a plan to raise >$175M over five years for the Pratt School of Engineering. The goals for this plan include:
- Securing an eight figure gift to fund the Engineering Design Center building.
- Receiving >$25M from internal resources (Provost SIP funds, etc)
- Forming the Strategic Planning Executive Committee (SPEC) to help raise funds for the plan
- Continuing to raise >$25M per year in the following “buckets” :
- Annual fund ($15M over five years)
- Corporate gifts ($25M over five years)
- Financial Aid Initiative ($10M plus $10M match from TDE)
- Endowed Professorships (15 @ $2.5M)
- Planned giving ($20M over five years)