2008-2009 Bulletin – PDF - SEAS Bulletin - Columbia University

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trical section of the Navy’s Bureau of
Ships. A proponent of nuclear sea
power, Rickover directed the planning
and construction of the world’s first
nuclear submarine, the 300-foot-long
Nautilus, launched in 1954.
THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE
Today, The Fu Foundation School of
Engineering and Applied Science, as
it was named in 1997, continues to
provide leadership for scientific and
educational advances. Even Joseph
Engelberger, Class of 1946, the father
of modern robotics, could not have
anticipated the revolutionary speed with
which cumbersome and expensive “big
science”computers would shrink to the
size of a wallet.
In 1986 the Engineering School was
one of the first schools in the country
to use videotapes as tools for distance
learning. Today Columbia Video Network
continues to be in the forefront of distance
learning at the graduate level
through its online education programs.
Named as one of Forbes Magazine’s
“Best of the Web,” CVN offers the
opportunity for students anywhere in the
world to enroll in certificate programs or
obtain a master’s or professional degree
from Columbia Engineering via the World
Wide Web.
THE NEW CENTURY
No one could have imagined the explosive
growth of technology and its interdisciplinary
impact. The Engineering
School is in a unique position to take
advantage of the research facilities and
talents housed at Columbia to form
relationships among and between other
schools and departments within the
University. The new Biomedical Engineering
Department, with close ties to
the Medical School, is but one example.
Interdisciplinary centers are the norm,
with cross-disciplinary research going
on in environmental chemistry, materials
science, medical digital libraries, digital
government, new media technologies,
and GK-12 education. The School
and its departments have links to the
Departments of Physics, Chemistry,
Earth Science, and Mathematics, as
well as the College of Physicians and
Surgeons, the Graduate School of
Journalism, Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory, and Teachers College. The
transforming gift of The Fu Foundation
has catapulted the School into the
forefront of collaborative research and
teaching and has given students the
opportunity to work with prize-winning
academicians, including Nobel laureates,
from many disciplines.
THE NEW RESEARCH
For the past several years, Columbia
has been first among the handful of
research universities that earn the
largest patent income from inventions
created by its faculty. The University is
the only academic institution that holds
patents in the patent pool for the manufacture
of MPEG-2, the technology that
enables DVDs and high definition TV.
Another exciting patent that holds great
promise is a laser-based method to
create a single crystal film for a variety
of devices, from solar cells to thin-film
transistors for flat panel displays for
computers. Within a short time, it may
be possible to put an entire computer
on a sheet of glass or plastic, thanks
to the innovations taking place in
Engineering School labs.
A FORWARD-LOOKING
TRADITION
But, for all its change, there is still a continuous
educational thread that remains
the same. The Fu Foundation School
of Engineering and Applied Science still
remains an institution of manageable
size within a great university. Committed
to the educational philosophy that a
broad, rigorous exposure to the liberal
arts provides the surest chart with which
an engineer can navigate the future, all
undergraduates must complete a modified
but equally rigorous version of
Columbia College’s celebrated Core
Curriculum. It is these selected courses
in Western Civilization and other major
cultures that best prepare a student for
advanced course work; a wide range of
eventual professions; and a continuing,
life-long pursuit of knowledge, understanding,
and social perspective. It is
also these Core courses that most
closely tie today’s student to the alumni
of centuries past. Through a shared
exposure to the nontechnical arts, all
Columbia engineering students—past,
present, and future—gain the humanistic
tools needed to build lives not solely as
technical innovators, but as social and
political ones as well.
SEAS 2008–2009