Program Rankings and Faculty Excellence in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
Program Rankings
Our undergraduate program is rated 4th in the nation by the Princeton Review's Gourman Report on Undergraduate Program. Our undergraduates are sought by industry and study at the top graduate programs.
Our graduate program was rated 8th in the nation in public universities (12th overall) by the National Research Council. We have strong research programs in fluid mechanics, solid mechanics amd the mechanics of materials, and aerospace systems.
The department was ranked highly on the 2007 Faculty Scholarship Productivity index from The Chronicle of Higher Education. The index placed AEM at #1 for <20 faculty, #2 for percentage of faculty with journal publication cited by another work, #5 overall for public universities and #10 for all institutions.
The University of Minnesota is ranked among the top three public research universities in a report of The Top American Research Universities, 2006.
Faculty Excellence
Our faculty is outstanding and many are internationally renowned. We have a former Regent's Professor (this is the highest faculty rank at the University and no more than 20 University of Minnesota faculty members may hold this rank). We have one Institute of Technology Distinguished Professor, three McKnight Distinguished Professors, and 7 of our junior faculty members have been named as McKnight Land-Grant Professors (mini-academic chairs for junior faculty). We also have one Packard Faculty Fellow and three NSF Career Awards.
External support for research and other activities per faculty member is one of the highest in the Institute of Technology. AEM's strong, far-reaching funding base is testimony to the interest our research activities draw from around the world -- and to the Department's considerable achievement in conducting high level, meaningful research. Major funding (greater than one million dollars) in the Department includes research programs in Direct Simulation of Particles in Flowing Liquid (National Science Foundation), Software Enabled Control of Aerospace Vehicles (Defense Advance Projects Administration), Nanometer to Millimeter Scale Aircraft (Air Force Office of Scientific Research), and Analysis of Turbulent Flows (National Science Foundation). In addition, we have many more smaller grants and contracts and every faculty member in the Department has external funding. We also have a NASA funded Minnesota Space Grant Consortium which supports educational and outreach activities in aerospace sciences and engineering from grades K through graduate school.
Our faculty members not only do research, but also teach. We teach some of the highest number of student credit hours per faculty member of any of the engineering departments and student evaluations of our courses are consistently very high.
Last Modified: 2007-12-11 at 15:29:22 -- this is in International Standard Date and Time Notation