A VISION FOR THE FUTURE:
College of Engineering and Applied Science
“Our vision is rooted in a commitment to holistic growth— of our students, faculty, research capabilities and physical infrastructure—ensuring that every aspect of our college reflects our unwavering dedication to excellence. Realizing this vision will take transformational change, through investments that build on our key strengths and make CEAS a nationally preeminent engineering and computing college.”
GET TO KNOW CEAS:
JOHN WEIDNER, PhD Dean of College of Engineering and Applied Science
On average, co-op students earn a total of $61,000, working for companies like Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and NASA.
The average research award size increased 175% from $114,000 in 2019 to $314,000 in 2024.
Funding from outside research grants and contracts in 2023-2024 academic year climbed to a record high of $46.3 million.
COVER: Yulia Martinez, CEAS ’23, as a co-op at 84.51.
LEADING A NEW ERA OF INNOVATION AND IMPACT
At the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS), we are committed to developing the next generation of talent to lead advancements in our evolving, knowledge-driven, technology-infused world.
More than 100 years ago, CEAS pioneered the cooperative education (co-op) model as a groundbreaking concept to transform engineering education. Our world-renowned co-op program seamlessly integrates classroom learning with professional work experience.
As we embark on the most significant transformation in our history, CEAS is poised to redefine what it means to be a leader in engineering education and research. This transformation will position us at the forefront of innovation, research and academic excellence and prepare our students to navigate this new era of rapid technological advancement with skills rooted in adaptability, creativity and problem solving.
Centered entirely on supporting our students’ success, we have constructed a 10-year vision for CEAS that will grow our areas of excellence in education, research and real-world impact.
This vision outlines our priority areas for philanthropic investment, including:
• Elevating student success through new research-focused cooperative educational programming and additional scholarships to promote recruiting and retaining the most sought-after talent.
• Accelerating research focused on advancing groundbreaking discoveries across manufacturing, health care and sustainability.
• Reimagining our learning and research environments with technology and facility improvements, to keep up with the growing needs of educating tomorrow’s leading engineers and computer scientists.
“UC’s engineering program has set me ahead of the curve in the job market. Because I gained job experience so early on in my academic career, I really got a feel for what career path is for me. The balance between academic and professional experience that UC’s engineering program provides is impeccable.”
JOEY CHEFF, CEAS ’21 Mechanical engineering
ELEVATING STUDENT SUCCESS
Growing and Graduating Top Talent
With more than 7,000 current students, CEAS remains an engine of growth and a recruitment driver for UC, with enrollment expected to grow 5% annually. However, existing central scholarships support only half of the current need and place the college far behind peer institutions in recruiting top students to come to Cincinnati.
Philanthropic Opportunities
Recruitment scholarships
To recruit the best and brightest students nationwide, CEAS must increase its scholarship and financial award packages. Our goal is for 50% of our enrollment growth to come from out-of-state students, which can be achieved by providing them with a scholarship that would bring down their tuition to the in-state level.
Retention scholarships
Before students can earn through co-op, getting to year two is critical for retention. For students without family or other resources, retention scholarships support them until they are able to reach their earning potential in co-op placements.
Fifth-year
scholarships
Need-based support will ensure fifth-year students, who have completed co-op, stay supported and enrolled in their final year and through graduation.
UC’s Mantei Center was dedicated in 2021 following a $25 million gift to honor Emeritus Professor of CEAS Thomas D Mantei. The naming gift, from alumnus Jim Goetz (BSEE ’88), is being used to expand computing both in the college and across the university.
“The co-op program helped me find my niche in the engineering world. The companies I worked with allowed me to work on many different projects and through trial and error, I was able to find that I’m passionate about working on embedded systems. Thanks to the co-op program, I am able to get a head start in my career and can pick out the projects I know I will be passionate about.”
LYNZIE ROMERO, CEAS ’22 Electrical engineering
Jalyn Stewart, CEAS ’22, at the construction site of FC Cincinnati’s stadium in Cincinnati’s West End during her time as a co-op at Turner Construction.
ELEVATING STUDENT SUCCESS
Cooperative Education and Experiential Learning
Our approach to engineering and computing education centers entirely on supporting our students. This starts with fully leveraging our crown jewel, UC’s co-op program, to make sure the student experience is world class, both inside and outside the classroom.
Co-op is not just a requirement of a CEAS education, it is an integral part of our teaching and training of tomorrow’s innovative engineers and computer scientists. Our top-five ranked co-op program integrates classroom learning with five semesters of professional work experience that benefits both the students and their employers. This partnership between academia and industry is central to our mission of equipping students with the skills, knowledge and ethical foundation to lead in a rapidly changing, technology-centric world.
Philanthropic Opportunities
Undergraduate research co-op
CEAS will create a new research-focused co-op within the college, allowing 50-70 of our most promising undergraduates to explore research careers that require a PhD.
National co-op placements
As enrollment grows, there is a need to expand co-op opportunities well beyond the Cincinnati region. Scholarships can allow students to choose the most relevant and impactful work experience, without limitations due to cost of living and travel.
International opportunities
The knowledge economy is a global marketplace. Unfortunately, the rising costs for housing and travel make study abroad and international co-op experiences available to only a select few. Scholarships and travel grants can remove these barriers and enable students to pursue a life-changing experience of living and working in a different culture.
ELEVATING STUDENT SUCCESS
Leadership Development
As an R1 research university, we are producing the teachers and researchers of the future who will lay the groundwork for new discoveries for generations to come. Through new and existing programs, we can nurture our students’ ability to listen, collaborate, lead and thrive in a diverse world.
Philanthropic Opportunities
Faculty fellows
To create and implement best practices in leadership development training, we will create a CEAS Faculty Fellows program for our best academic leaders to mentor promising early career graduate students and junior faculty. These highly selective appointments will allow faculty to devote time and resources, including travel and professional development, to develop and carry out mentorship activities.
Our goal is to name 20 faculty fellows per year, providing a $5,000 stipend and $5,000 for professional development for their work.
Leadership programming
In conjunction with the Warren Bennis Leadership Institute at UC, CEAS will implement leadership programs across the college that will touch all students, not just a select few. We will create an infrastructure for leadership development, with the goal of providing CEAS students with a robust environment of leadership training opportunities.
Student organizations
Student organizations provide unique leadership opportunities, access to national training programs and networking beyond UC. New and existing support will provide opportunities for more students to engage in student organizations, both at UC and nationally, and further grow their leadership skills.
Entrepreneurial Thinking
An entrepreneurial mindset is critical whether a student wants to start their own company or work for a Fortune 500 company. With this focus, our graduates will continue to affirm CEAS’ position as a trailblazer in cultivating innovation and excellence.
With donor investments and new partnerships, we will expand both extracurricular opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and launch curriculum changes focused on nurturing entrepreneurial thinking within students’ engineering education.
Philanthropic Opportunities
Extracurricular programming
CEAS students have been an exponential driving force behind UC’s Center for Entrepreneurship, based in the Lindner College of Business. Engineering and computing students’ participation in center activities grew ten-fold over the past two years. They now make up more than half of center participants, and that percentage is expected to exceed 75% in the coming years. To make entrepreneurial thinking systematic, programming activities must substantially increase.
Named entrepreneurial professorships
Thought leaders in technical innovation and entrepreneurship are needed to drive extracurricular programming and guide curricula changes.
CEAS graduate student at the Digital Futures building.
ACCELERATING RESEARCH
Aligned with our R1 research university status, our graduate programs are at the forefront of educating the next generation of technology leaders and shaping tomorrow’s industries.
In 2024, CEAS had a record-breaking year, raising over $46.3 million in grants and contracts. This mobilized discoveries in virus testing, breakthroughs in urban flood research and innovations in pandemic response. We are changing everyday tasks, altering traditional systems and improving lives.
As we focus on creating solutions that will have the most impact, we look to three sectors that will be fundamentally transformed over the next decade: manufacturing, health care and sustainability.
CEAS student working in lab.
Our faculty are not only focused on these three sectors, but are also involved in crosscutting areas that have a broad impact, including:
Manufacturing: Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute
Our Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute exemplifies the vital role our regional and national industrial partners play in helping us shape tomorrow’s workforce and solve problems for practical applications.
By fostering partnerships with industry leaders such as Procter & Gamble, Siemens and Kinetic Vision, our Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute aims to combine technical advancements with human-centered industrial systems, including human factors, human/machine interface, interaction assessment and design, and human performance integration and augmentation.
Health care: Biomedical research
Researchers in biomedical engineering are looking at concussions in sports from all angles, to understand their impact on the brain and improve concussion prevention through better designed helmets. Researchers are also studying how AI can make a big difference in medical diagnostics and imaging, for example, using the results from a routine mammogram to detect and prevent coronary artery disease in women.
Sustainability: The Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine
CEAS at UC is part of a three-state coalition funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and comprising municipal governments, industries and research institutions in Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin. This NSF Innovation Engine aims to discover, develop and deploy innovative key technologies that attract water-intensive manufacturers to the region, recover valuable energy and mineral resources from wastewater streams and foster workforce opportunities, all while maintaining environmental health.
“Research pushes the boundaries of all our scientific and technical areas of endeavor. Our research accomplishments come from our dedicated faculty who never stop seeking new knowledge, and our students who are the future of engineering.”
GAUTAM PILLAY, PhD Associate Dean of Research
UC biomedical engineer Riccardo Barrile and his students have developed a 3D-printed blood vessel to test new drugs for brain tumors.
Philanthropic Opportunities
To educate our growing student body and raise our level of regional talent, we are expanding our faculty recruitment and adding research fellowship opportunities.
Named faculty professorships
Named professorships are vital to attracting and retaining expert faculty members, who often bring external grant funding and graduate student researchers to Cincinnati. Dedicated professorships can provide faculty with resources to expand research or retain outstanding educators within the college.
A $2 million endowed chair creates $80,000 each year to support faculty activities. Our goal is to add 10 endowed chairs in priority departments and fields over the next five years.
Graduate research fellowships
Our graduate students tackle the most challenging global technical problems, so it’s imperative that we attract top talent from around the world. To recruit excellent graduate students, the college needs fellowships to support students for their first year, after which they are typically supported by external research grant funding.
A $20 million endowment will support 20 PhD students with $40,000 each annually.
Seed funding
Emerging fields need faculty time and funding to generate new ideas and collaborate across fields. However, national funding is based on momentum, placing new partnerships at a disadvantage. Dedicated seed funding allows the college to support faculty ideas and partnerships to generate data and test new ideas.
A $5 million endowment for seed funding will generate $200,000 per year to explore cuttingedge research.
“Creating dynamic spaces where engineering and computing students and faculty engage with our partners on campus and across Greater Cincinnati requires us to approach how we learn and work in new ways. As teaching, learning, research and innovation are elevated, we will be able to attract more highquality students, exceptional faculty and cutting-edge industry partners.”
ANASTASIOS ANGELOPOULOS, PhD
Associate Dean of Undergraduate Affairs
REIMAGINING OUR RESEARCH ENVIRONMENTS
Putting students at the heart of everything we do requires learning and research environments that unlock our students’ full potential.
To create a state-of-the-art engineering and computing hub in the heart of UC’s Uptown campus, the university and college are building a comprehensive seven-year capital plan that will receive university investment and is anticipated to receive public support from the State of Ohio.
However, bringing this full vision to life will require new partnerships and philanthropic support to ensure that our buildings have the modern technology and equipment that make UC a nationally preeminent engineering and computing college.
With the support of our partners, we will create:
• State-of-the-art research and teaching labs, innovative design studios, hands-on maker spaces and interactive classrooms.
• New learning studios that allow for more flexible and modern classroom instruction.
• Experiential learning environments that lead the way in higher education for students, supporting workforce development for our region and recruitment of faculty and industry partners to UC.
Philanthropic Opportunities
High-tech instructional equipment
Hands-on laboratory learning is critical to a CEAS education. While engineering fundamentals haven’t changed in the last decades, equipment has.
New technology allows students to view at a finer level the phenomena and processes they are studying—making better connections between theory and practice.
Transformational buildings
The capital plan will reimagine three spaces, creating:
• a renovated Old Chemistry building.
• new STEM-focused building on the site of Crosley Tower; and
• a renovated Rhodes Hall.