Pratt School of Engineering
Executive Summary
Engineers solve problems. The mission of the Pratt School is to prepare our students to address the complex problems associated with a growing and global society. Extraordinary success at carrying out our mission will require bold, creative and innovative educational programs.
Our vision for the educational program is one that integrates the great cultural subjects (biological and physical sciences, mathematics, history, political science, social science and the arts and humanities) into a rigorous, accredited engineering curriculum. The curriculum will foster the joy of discovery and experiential learning through hands-on laboratory instruction, team-based project classes, participation in engineering competitions and independent research supervised by the world's best faculty and staff. It is this kind of learning environment that will equip our students with the intellectual agility to contribute to the betterment of our global society, while enjoying productive and rewarding lives in their chosen careers.
Our goal is to be recognized as a distinguished school of engineering (top 15 undergraduate and graduate), thereby strengthening Duke University's overall brand and solidifying Duke's position among the very best universities in the world.
To carry out our mission, realize our vision and achieve our goal, we must dramatically change the way engineering education is traditionally taught in this country. And the stakes have never been higher in terms of retaining our international leadership in technology and innovation. With significant investments by Duke, our friends, faculty and alumni, we are well positioned to provide this new educational experience for our students. To fully succeed in educating what we call "dynamic engineers", we need to do these things well:
Integrate the great cultural subjects into our rigorous technical curriculum
Build modern laboratory facilities to foster experiential learning
Focus our research on solving important problems that require the collective and coherent action of a diverse and technically savvy team.
Leverage the great professional schools that surround us in addressing multidisciplinary research and educational opportunities.
If we can do these four things better than anyone else, we will be the most distinguished school of engineering in the world, and the rankings will follow.
An objective of the School is to be recognized externally as a distinguished engineering educator. Though we are not tailoring our programs to pander to external rankings, it is important to be aware of what metrics are used by, say, the US News and World Report to rank graduate programs (which has a positive influence on our undergraduate ranking as well). By USNWR, in order to achieve a top 15 ranking over
the next five years, we will need to: