<p>The Engineering school’s FAMU association continues to scare away potential applicants to UF and UCF, but it’s still a quality program. I believe it was recently ranked about 100 nationally. You would have no idea that the engineering school is ranked only a few places behind UCF given the widespread perception that UCF has a “great” engineering school. I wish President Barron would use Governor Scott’s STEM fixation to help us build our own facility, adjacent to the main campus.</p>
<p>I believe that FSU’s Computer Science department, which is not a part of the engineering school, is growing rapidly and is catching up with UF.</p>
<p>Were it called the “FSU College of Engineering” the rankings would be substantially higher.</p>
<p>But the real point I see in Barron’s pronouncement is that FSU has excellent STEM programs as-is, even with the engineering association to Florida A&M.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it should be explored in the form that the current CoE organization is inefficient and squanders the accumulated academic excellence of Florida State University, at a minimum. It really doesn’t matter that FAMU is part of the solution; I think they’d want to be involved as opposed to scraping by on their own. </p>
<p>There is no money to waste now on feel-good political constructions. I think that time has gone and we need to reorganize the College of Engineering towards maximizing academic productivity and excellence which would reward the entire State of Florida for the millions it pours into this public asset. Indeed, the only National Laboratory in Florida is a stone’s throw from the CoE. They should be joined in synergistic ways that stimulate graduate engineering research.</p>
<p>In return that high level of research tends to improve the undergraduate engineering experience.</p>
<p>This seems to me, as a layman, a solid way to go.</p>
<p>Florida legislators, Florida’s Gov. Scott, and the Florida Board of Governors proved there is money available to waste on feel-good political constructions when they allowed the creation of Florida Polytechnic University earlier this year. The money appropriated for the new, unnecessary state university in Lakeland would have been better spent improving and helping existing STEM programs at already established public universities like FSU.</p>
<p>Splitting engineering should be one of Barron’s top priorities in my opinion. Getting FSU a dedicated engineering school would be a huge legacy and greatly benefit FSU in the future.</p>
<p>Also, speaking of computer science, I didn’t realize until recently that FSU’s CS program is ABET accredited and UF’s is not. This is a nice selling point for FSU. ABET accreditation is really only important in engineering fields, but it’s an added mark of quality. It’d be good if our IT program could obtain ABET accreditation as well.</p>
<p>I’d honestly recommend FSU’s CS department over UF’s now that I know about the ABET accreditation, UF nearly shuttered their department a few months ago, and last I checked, FSU’s CS department had the most research funding in the state.</p>