The new dean of the University of Wyoming’s College of Engineering and Applied Science began his tenure last month. He took on the job amid a state and industry-backed push to boost the school’s status nationwide.
Dean Michael Pishko says the so-called ‘Tier 1’ Engineering Initiative—which was announced three years ago—is not simply looking to deliver a bump in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings.
“Rankings don’t matter,” says Pishko. “What matters is that we make the commitment to really be outstanding. And that means we need to recruit the best the best possible students. We need to make sure those students stay in the major and do well, and we need to make sure that they are placed in jobs.”
Traditionally, ‘Tier 1’ refers to schools in the top 25 percent of college rankings. U.S. News and World Report ranked UW’s College of Engineering graduate program 127 out of 140 schools last year.
State and industry leaders met at the UW last week to discuss the status of the ‘Tier 1’ initiative. Dr. Pishko says the group laid out its priorities for the coming year.
“And our priorities right now are—completing the petroleum engineering department,” says Pishko. “We have a really critical situation in the college—where we have five petroleum engineering faculty and 400 students. So that is just a terrible situation that we need to rectify—and we need to rectify quickly.”
Pishko says he plans to double the number of petroleum engineering faculty by the end of next year. Other priorities include funding student scholarships and technology infrastructure—and improving academic programming related to energy, water and computational science.
