Indiana Wesleyan University is currently developing plans to expand its curriculum options for students.
It was announced earlier this week that the university is laying the foundation for a new engineering degree, which could welcome its first students by 2017.
The potential engineering program was presented at the Board of Trustees March meeting by Dr. John Lakanen, the Division Chair of the Natural Sciences Department. The program would focus on biomedical, mechanical, and electrical engineering.
"With electrical, it would also have computer engineering and usually that is considered one concentration," Lakanen said. "Biomedical engineering will be a good parallel program with our health sciences initiative. Mechanical and electrical are naturally supportive areas for biomedical. It just makes sense to offer those as concentrations."
Lakanen added that the engineering program was presented because it is a popular field of study for students.
"There is a tremendous market for engineers. Students are interested in getting an engineering degree. We're offering, essentially, what students are interested in," he said. "We hope the program is successful and attracts a fairly large number of students."
Ideally, Lakanen said that he would like there to be between 200 and 300 students studying engineering on campus within a decade.
"If everything falls into place, we're hoping that the first students would arrive in the fall of 2017," he said.
Putting an engineering program into place would expand on Indiana Wesleyan's current course offerings and, according to Taylor University professor Hank Voss, provide a more balanced liberal arts education.
"That's exciting. I was always encouraging them to do that. That's good news. I think that will really help a liberal arts school to have a better balance," Voss said. "We have engineering at Taylor and it's been exciting to have engineering at a liberal arts school."
Voss is a professor of engineering and physics at Taylor who said that when a school offers a variety of disciplines for students to choose from, it allows them to "think and learn and discuss. That balance is critical in spiritual arguments."
"At Christian liberal arts schools there is a lot of confusion about how science, liberal arts and scripture tie together," he said. "Science, many times, is neglected in a liberal arts school and yet it is a very important subject. Now, young students that are strong in the sciences can go to a Christian liberal arts school where their education is much more balanced."
And, since engineering is an in-demand career, Lakanen said students will have more options for employment after graduation.
"From the programs we've talked to and visited there was a nearly 100 percent placement of those engineering students into jobs upon graduation," he said.
Keith Newman, Chief Executive Officer of Residential Education at IWU, said earlier this week that any cost estimates for the new program were preliminary.
"They're really preliminary," he said. "Most of them involve facilities and personnel, adding faculty and staff and coaches but that's really the work we'll do to finalize between now and October."
For the engineering program, "just equipment costs could be as much as $1 million," Newman added.
Hiring faculty and staff could be another $1 to $1.5 million and a new facility could be anywhere from $3 to $6 million.
"This would be a completely new program for Indiana Wesleyan, so it would require hiring engineers as faculty," Lakanen said.
The program has not been finalized yet. The Board of Trustees will decide on that, along with two new athletic programs, at its meeting in October.