Dean's Message
From the Dean: Excellence on the Rise
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is an R2 public research institution, which the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education defines as a doctoral university with high research activity. It has an aspiration to become an R1 institution within the next couple of years, or a Carnegie Classification as very high spending on research and doctorate production – putting SIU Carbondale on the same level as flagships universities throughout the U.S.
SIU Carbondale had 11,790 students in fall 2024. The College of Engineering, Computing, Technology, and Mathematics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale has six schools and offers 14 undergraduate degree programs, 11 master’s degree programs, and 5 Ph.D. programs in engineering, technology, computer science, and mathematics. Our college’s enrollment is 1,389 in fall 2024. Our college has six schools: School of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering; School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Materials Engineering; School of Computing; School of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering; School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, and School of Applied Engineering and Technology.
Our college’s vision is to become an internationally recognized leader in high quality education, research and scholarship with an emphasis on student success, inclusive excellence and service to society. Our mission is to deliver high quality education, research and scholarship while fostering a diverse, equitable and inclusive learning and working environment. One of our strategic goals is to increase the college’s enrollment to 1,750 students by 2030.
This past year has been exciting for Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s College of Engineering, Computing, Technology, and Mathematics. Our college continues to grow and made excellent progress toward our strategic goals outlined in its strategic plan for 2030. Our enrollment grew annually 12.7% in spring 2024, and this growth rate has been the highest over at least the past 15 years. Our enrollment grew annually 2.9% in fall 2024.
Our enrollment turnaround plan, created in fall 2020, has been successfully implemented, and we achieved significant enrollment turnaround and growth in the past four years. The numbers of incoming students have increased significantly. The number of new undergraduate freshmen increased by 78.5% in fall 2021, 56% in fall 2022, 69% in fall 2023, and 82.1% in fall 2024 respectively compared with 2020. Our graduate enrollment also grew 15.7% over the past four years. The college enrollment growth has been a result of concerted effort toward implementation of our enrollment turnaround plan; the hard work of our recruitment team, leadership team, faculty, staff and students, and support received from campus and college’s alumni.
Our students achieved great success. Morgan Klover, a senior in civil engineering from Decatur, Illinois, has been named to the 2024 New Faces of Civil Engineering-College by the American Society of Civil Engineering. ASCE names just 10 students nationwide to its annual list to honor outstanding engineers of tomorrow. The Southern Illinois University Carbondale Security Dawgs, our college’s student cybersecurity team, clinched the top spot at the Illinois State Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on Feb. 17, 2024. The success of the Security Dawgs demonstrates the quality of education and training in cybersecurity in our college.
Two new undergraduate academic programs have been created in the past year: B.S. in cybersecurity technology and B.S. in statistics. We welcome prospective students to apply to these programs. Cybersecurity technology was launched successfully, and it had 62 students in its first cohort of fall 2024. We also created a new Ph.D. program in mechanical engineering in support of SIU’s aspiration for becoming an R1 research institution, and we expect to have its first cohort in this coming academic year.
Faculty at the College of Engineering, Computing, Technology, and Mathematics are outstanding, with both a national and international reputation. They conduct state-of-art research and have won many research awards. Our college received new research grants of $3.77 million for the fiscal year 2024 (which ended June 30), doubling from 2020. 90% of these new research grants were from federal funding agencies. In addition to funded research, our faculty and students published many high-quality technical papers in top journals and conferences.
Our college’s success would not be possible without the generosity of alumni and other donors. We appreciate their great support. They have continued to make donations to sustain our students, faculty and facility in the past year. One example is a contribution honoring Roger J. Missavage, who was director of the Computer Assisted Instruction and Research Laboratory at our college for 29 years before he passed away in 2021. His brother Dennis Missavage, and sister and brother-in-law, Arlene and Gene Liss, established the Roger J. Missavage Endowed Fund to support engineering education at the college and creating the Roger J. Missavage Technical Service Center with a $500,000 gift.
Xiaoqing “Frank” Liu
Dean of College of Engineering, Computing, Technology, and Mathematics
Southern Illinois University Carbondale