The university plans to build another level onto the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building to house a new bioengineering department, which will be largely funded by a $30 million donation from alumnus Robert E. Fischell.
Officials from the bioengineering department say the new undergraduate bioengineering major will garner a large amount of student interest but will be capped at 50 students in its startup this fall.
“All indications are that its going to be fairly popular,” said John Fisher, a bioengineering professor.
Bioengineering combines biology and engineering, and many of its students can go into health care to diagnose disease and develop new medical treatments.
The project is still in its infancy, but officials also plan to use the endowment to hire 15 new faculty members from the nation’s top engineering schools, including Duke University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania.
The department will be named after Fischell, who had a primary role in developing the new major.
Fischell contributed the money, the third-largest donation in the university’s history, to the A. James Clark School of Engineering in December to create an undergraduate bioengineering major and develop existing programs, enhancing research in human health.
“He’s very involved, and we appreciate that,” said William E. Bentley, chairman of the graduate bioengineering program. “He could have a big impact here.”
The building’s addition, scheduled for construction in 2007, will be the first tangible, “brick and mortar” product of the endowment, Bentley said.
The new space, located next to the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering buildings, will hold administrative offices and laboratories for the undergraduate bioengineering department, which is the university’s first engineering major created in the past 50 years.
Of all the public universities with bioengineering programs, this university will be the last of the top-10 public engineering schools to get an undergraduate bioengineering major, Bentley said.
Fisher said he anticipates a large amount of student interest because of its connection to health care, which tends to attract more people – particularly women, who are underrepresented in many other engineering departments. Overall, the engineering school has a 19.3 percent female enrollment.
The size of the bioengineering major will be a small fraction of the entire school, compared to 800 undergraduate students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the engineering school’s largest program.
The department will be staffed with 15 new faculty members within the next five years. The department is finding candidates to fill the new positions and will begin hiring immediately, Fisher and Bentley said.
Contact reporter Patrick Reaves at reavesdbk@gmail.com.
