Engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University was originally established as the School of Engineering in fall 2005 and became the U.A. Whitaker College of Engineering (WCE) in August 2011. The WCE is located in Holmes Hall, a building that was specifically designed for student-centered teaching of engineering and computing courses in an active and collaborative learning environment.The College currently has 23 faculty and staff and over 800 students and offers undergraduate engineering degree programs in bioengineering, civil engineering, environmental engineering, and software engineering as well as an undergraduate degree in computer science for students who were on campus before fall 2011.
The BS in Bioengineering, B.S. in Civil Engineering, and B.S. in Environmental Engineering are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET. The college will apply to have the software engineering degree accredited after the first students graduate with the BS in Software Engineering in May 2015.
The B.S. in Computer Science is being phased out with the last students expected to graduate by 2014.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment outlook for the engineering degree programs is among the best with 72 percent growth in projected employment for bioengineering (also called biomedical engineering), 24 percent in civil engineering, 31 percent in environmental engineering, and 32 percent in software engineering between 2008 and 2018.
Projected job growth in software engineering should result in 295,000 new jobs in this field.
For more information about FGCU’s College of Engineering go to http://www.fgcu.edu/eng/.