Message from the Dean

The Newark College of Engineering has been preparing engineers for active roles and leadership in the community and the profession for more than a century (107 years to be exact). At the present time, we estimate that there are about 40,000 professionally active graduates of NCE, engaged in scores of disciplines, from transportation to avionics, and from robotics and medical devices to the design of refineries.  

When NCE was established in 1919, it was a stand-alone college of engineering only, with small service units providing education to engineering students in English and basic sciences. In time, other academic units were added to the school, and today NCE is “surrounded” by colleges that focus on the arts, the sciences, architecture, design, business, and computing. It is natural to ask – what makes engineering different than these other academic units? What makes us different?

The list of distinctions is quite long, but here are some of them. Most non-engineering academic disciplines, especially in the sciences, are fundamentally interested in how things, processes, and systems work. Scientists in many areas of pursuit are perfectly happy when they have accurate models of existing phenomena and processes, and when they can estimate how far these models can be expanded beyond current capabilities. While modeling is very important in most engineering explorations, the engineering project is seldom done when we engineers possess a good model. A good model is usually just the starting point. Our projects are considered successful only when we have actually taken promising models and translated them into physical devices and into working, productive, and safe systems. Think about the relationship between studying thermodynamics against the design and installation of a heat exchanger in a manufacturing plant. Or the study of electromagnetism vs. the design and installation of a wideband over-the-horizon microwave communication system. 

One consequence of this emphasis on implementation and installation is that our work as engineers almost always impacts others – our community; other communities; human beings of all ages, occupations, economic statuses and lifestyles; as well as the environment – including the climate, air and water, plant life and animal life. The heat equation, its interpretation and solutions, are indifferent to any societal aspects of their possible applications. Not so are the designs that are based on the heat equation for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in buildings and cars. These implementations (and the engineers who implemented them) affect society in very specific and critical manners. Similarly, Maxwell’s Equations, the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, electric and magnetic circuits, have no conscience or moral compass. What we do with them is actually quite significant in supporting morality and social justice. This social impact happens when we use Maxwell’s Equations to design and implement smart grids for densely populated cities or bring electricity and optical-fiber communication lines to remote, isolated areas. 

Engineers Week is an opportunity to celebrate the unique role that engineering occupies in affecting human welfare and the environment. Engineers Week is also an opportunity to remind ourselves that our work as engineers extends well beyond the scientific fundamentals on which our profession stands. Its impacts spread into the welfare, safety and happiness of society, and into the quest to preserve and protect our environment.  

Moshe Kam, Ph.D., P.E.
Dean, Newark College of Engineering