Save Tulane Engineering

[jmyers]

According to Scott Cowen (though he won't say this openly), the reason engineering is not considered "world class" is because the departments are not large enough to compete with other ranked departments in the US.

That means that we don't have enough teachers, students, money, or some other quantitative item to be printed on a list.

So I guess the quality of our education, which is known world wide to be excellent, takes second place to whether or not people who don't know anything about us will see "Tulane Engineering" next to a relatively small integer in some book or magazine.

I'd beg to differ. Besides, this is the time to really expand engineering, don't you think?
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Jace Myers
Computer Engineering 2008

[wwalkeri]

When talking about other departments and schools at Tulane we must consider that if we are to succeed, we should probably act with a bit of humility when talking about others. After all it is not only engineers upset about this decision. If we are to truly be successful, we need to watch how we portray our engineering attitudes and ego's. As an engineering student, I know we all have over blown ego's with regards to our abilities and areas of study. Let us stop saying how great we are compared to everyone else, and let us show it through our actions.

[perturbed1]

Well I gues we have a world class business school since it wasn't cut. Course it must be world class because Scott has an endowed chair there. Makes this little factoid amusing.

http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2004/06/chronicle-for-higher-education-report.html



"While experts on diploma mills -- broadly defined as unaccredited institutions that require students to do little or no work to earn degrees -- warn of the damage they do to the integrity of higher education, many satisfied customers say they get their money's worth. "Just the ability to put Ph.D. behind my name is what I was looking for," says Wayne J. del Corral, who teaches finance part time at Tulane University. "It'll make things a lot easier with respect to submitting papers to journals and so forth."

He also appreciates that his diploma from Lacrosse University looks so real. "The seal is very nice," he says."[/code][/url]

[limacodid]

Cowen wrote this to me-

As I mentioned in my previous email to you, our recent decisions have been influenced by our need to secure the university's financial viability while preserving its academic excellence. To achieve this we decided to focus our resources on programs and schools where we have the greatest potential to achieve a national reputation in undergraduate and graduate education, as well as in academic research. Unfortunately, many of our engineering programs are simply too small – in terms of faculty, student enrollments, and funding – relative to their counterparts to effectively compete for national recognition. For example, most comparable schools have engineering faculties than are more than twice the size of Tulane's.

[bethmcardle]

Yeah. 1) they didn't start out that size, and 2) bigger is not necessarily better. 900 very good students makes a much better department (and reputation) than one with 900 good students + 400 average students + 400 mediocre students, etc.
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-- Beth (McArdle) Allen E'85

[Dr. Ash]

I happen to teach at the largest CS school in the country. Bigger is not necessarily better.