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Department of Integrated Engineering & Technology

Integrated Engineering and Pre-Engineering

Regents Approve SUU B.S. Degree in Integrated Engineering

March 19, 2001

Within a window of 24 hours last week, Southern Utah University experienced two pathfinding firsts:  playing in the “March Madness” NCAA Tournament, and obtaining approval for the Board of Regents to offer a new bachelor’s of science degree in integrated engineering.

The Thunderbirds gave such a valiant and impressive performance in the game against Boston College that Coach Evans quoted Vince Lombardi in description of the contest, exclaiming, “We didn’t lose the game—we just ran out of time!”  This gallant band of T-Birds and their coaches made the entire community proud.  They are winners, indeed!

And, engineering students desiring to meet the unique demands of the field recently surfacing in industry trends will be winners, too, at SUU, as it prepares for a new bachelor’s program in integrated engineering. \

An integrated engineering program is one designed to meet the particular needs of small and medium-sized companies.  Nowadays, many of the small companies call ill afford to hire a fleet of engineering specialists.  So, the integrated engineering degree will produce an interdisciplinary engineering generalist who will deal with most smaller companies’ engineering challenges, limiting expenses for specialists to isolated situations of such need.

The new engineering degree for SUU was up for review at last Fridays’ Board of Regents meeting in St. George, after more than a year of planning by SUU faculty and administration.  After considerable discussion on the nature of the degree, its funding and major objectives, the Regents moved the proposal from a non-action to an action item on the agenda.  Once the Regents had all of their questions answered, the body voted to approve the program. 

SUU President Steve Bennion happily exclaimed, “This is such an important initiative for the University.  We have worked on this proposed degree for over a year—visiting other campuses that offer such a program, undertaking surveys, planning for funding and more.  It will help prepare excellent engineers for the small and medium-sized companies of Southern Utah and the state.  Particular thanks goes to several faculty members who worked extensively on the projects, including Richard Dotson, Idir Azouz, Richard Kimball and Desmond Penny, and of course, to SUU’s Trustees and the Regents for their support.”  Bennion further noted that the Utah Manufacturing Extension   Partnership has been very supportive of this proposal in their role of representing small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Utah.

Richard Dotson, longstanding SUU faculty, expressed the feelings of all involved by noting, “This is an idea whose time has come!” 

Pending funding support from the legislative-approved engineering initiative, the program will start this Fall 2001.

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