Celebrating A Legacy of Engineering Excellence
In 2019, the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE) at the University of Florida celebrated 85 years of excellence and innovation in education and research. The department, which was established in 1934, received its initial ABET accreditation in 1936 and is recognized as one of the first seven U.S. ISE departments to be accredited by the board.
This milestone represented a time for reflection on what the department had accomplished and excitement for the future. The department hired several faculty to expand areas of research and teaching interests. These faculty developed new laboratories and strengthened the curriculum by identifying a broad range of contemporary skills for ISE students. At the 85th anniversary, the department also made plans for achieving greatness in the next 85 years to come.
Below are a few initiatives that we are pursuing to achieve another 85 years of excellence::
Elevating Our Curriculum to New Levels
The department is enhancing the undergraduate curriculum with a new engineering foundation. This means ensuring all engineering core courses that we require have relevance to ISE option courses. It also means defining an ISE core that addresses contemporary demands of industry. These actions are directed at making our outstanding undergraduate students more successful in the engineering job market.
Specializing in Technical Excellence
Industrial & systems engineering is a unique discipline within the engineering industry. It has multiple concentrations that allow graduates to be versatile and flexible in their careers. We will be offering more electives in specialized areas (e.g., health systems, human systems, etc.) that allow students to define concentration tracks on top of a contemporary ISE foundation. This approach will strengthen technical skills and allow students to explore research and industry work in a broader range of domains.
Emphasis on Diversity for Innovation and Decision Making
We are extremely proud of our diversified student populations. We are closing the gender gap, with almost 50 percent of undergraduate student population being female, and our underrepresented minority population is vast and all encompassing. Bringing people together from all types of background experiences serves to improve the quality of decisions we make regarding our program content and research. The diversity of our department means that we can tackle the world’s most challenging problems and that our success is only limited by what we can imagine together.
Transforming the World Through Our Alumni
Many of our alumni are leading the way in industry and academia. Our graduates have achieved excellence in multi-national corporations, start-up companies, government research agencies, branches of the military, research labs, and other universities. UF ISE alumni are transforming the way people work and pursue leisure to promote the quality of life. We believe the success of our alumni directly reflects the quality and caliber of our academic programs.
To see photos from the 85th Anniversary Celebration event, click HERE.
celebrate with us
Help us get to where we want to go and achieve our goals in the next 85 years to come!