Beginning in the fall, Duquense University students will be able to complete four new engineering programs on the school's downtown campus. Duquesne currently sends those students to the University of Pittsburgh and Case Western to finish their degrees.
The university is also renaming its School of Natural and Environmental Sciences as the School of Science and Engineering.
Students will be able to access general first-year engineering coursework starting this fall semester. Then, in the fall of 2024, the school will offer mechanical engineering, environmental/energy engineering, systems engineering and engineering physics. The school currently offers biomedical engineering.
According to Provost David Dausey, administrators had been discussing expanding its engineering work for more than a decade.
As the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that nearly 140,000 new engineering jobs are expected to be available by 2026, the time was right.
“As we think about systems engineering, we talk about artificial intelligence and … some of the things that are going on right now related to that, people are able to work in not only those fields as they continue to evolve, but are able to make contributions locally and nationally,” Dausey said.
He said the school will focus on training “ethical engineers.”
“As part of our general education with students, they all go through a sequence that includes ethics. And I think that sequence, but also just the way that we approach things from our mission, is a unique education and it’s something that’s distinctive to Duquesne,” he said.
Duquesne serves about 8,500 graduate and undergraduate students on its downtown campus.
