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In 1995, the College of Engineering at Iowa State University created a strategic plan entitled The Blueprint for the Future, which emphasized improvements in the undergraduate education program and laid out a set of objectives to be achieved by the year 2000. In 1998, the document was updated and streamlined to become The Blueprint for Excellence with performance objectives targeted at the year 2003 with the emphasis once again on the undergraduate program. Based on progress in the college’s programs during the past seven years, the college is now prepared to undertake the following new Reach for the Top challenge directed at its graduate education and research efforts:

By the year 2012, the College of Engineering at Iowa State University will be one of the top 20 graduate engineering programs¹ in the country.

Although it will not be easy to achieve top-20 status, it is an achievable objective if the entire college is committed to the needed changes.

It is reasonable to ask why the College of Engineering would undertake such an ambitious objective. The college already has an excellent undergraduate² program with a well-respected graduate/research program. However, the college cannot be complacent. Several of the engineering colleges that currently rank below Iowa State are undertaking aggressive efforts to improve their rankings. If this college stands still, it will fall behind more assertive institutions, and its graduate and undergraduate programs will suffer as a result.

Iowa State University wishes to be one of the nation’s best universities in fulfilling its land-grant mission. It is clear that this Reach for the Top objective is an essential element of achieving this goal. In fact, without this improvement in the quality of its engineering graduate programs, the university has little hope of making progress towards its goal.

Top-20 status will enhance the college's opportunities to recruit and retain top faculty and students. As a result, both graduate and undergraduate students will receive a better education and, as a consequence, enhanced career opportunities. It will enhance the college’s competitiveness for contracts, grants, and external collaborations. It will enhance the college’s standing with the central administration, the Board of Regents, legislators, and the people of Iowa. It will create opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to participate in national leadership roles. It will provide the college with increased opportunities to lead engineering education, engagement, and research through enhanced visibility of the college, its people, and programs. Achieving top-20 status will also create contagious pride in faculty, staff, students, and friends and will make the college a more exciting place to work.

The top 20 programs have a strong research tradition with an emphasis on doctoral production. While graduate education and research are top priorities at these schools, undergraduate programs are almost always excellent and innovative.³ In fact, most of the colleges that are ranked in the top 20 for their graduate programs are similarly ranked for their undergraduate programs. The teaching vs. research debate has been replaced by an understanding that both must be accomplished to achieve excellence. There are few, if any, weaknesses in either programs or faculty. Many of the department programs in the top 20 colleges are also ranked highly. The top 20 programs have high-quality graduate students with many on fellowships, and the faculty set high expectations of them. The top programs are very selective in hiring new faculty members and, in some cases, ruthless in their expectations of these new faculty members. However, the top faculty members are very well rewarded, with most senior faculty holding endowed positions and receiving a wide variety of financial and non-financial rewards. The top programs have an inordinate degree of alumni loyalty that translates into major private gifts.

The top 20 programs are intensely competitive. Their faculty, staff, and administrators believe that they deserve to be number one. They know the competition and want to stay at the top. The reputations of most of these programs extend well beyond engineering. They have a creative and flexible culture and generally an empowered environment that allows faculty and staff to reach their maximum potential. They stay closely connected with new directions in research through a wide variety of circles of excellence as well as a regular stream of distinguished visitors from other top programs.

The faculty members in top-20 programs provide national and international leadership in professional societies and are perceived to be trend-setting leaders of their research fields—often establishing the agenda for others to follow. Research funding of these faculty members averages more than $400K per year. Faculty members have a steady stream of top graduate students and produce about one Ph.D. graduate every two years; these graduates take jobs at top schools or in leading industrial organizations. The faculty members at top-20 programs possess an entrepreneurial attitude and demonstrate the initiative and willingness to take risks often resulting in new fields of research.

Faculty members at top-20 programs have close contacts with technology leaders in industries and education and have active consulting careers with sophisticated technology organizations. There is clear evidence that these faculty activities enhance the economic development activities of their state. Faculty members in the top programs are self-confident and believe that their job is to define the field and solve the world’s problems. They take frequent advantage of professional development leaves to visit other top programs or industrial technology leaders.

The college undertook an extensive review of its objective performance relative to its peers⁴ and the comparative information from this review is summarized⁵ in the table below. It is clear that this is a challenging peer group since all of the members rank in the top 50 and only three rank below us. The midpoint of this peer group is ranked 20th—the goal of the college for 2012.

The following table provides a further breakdown of the graduate performance of the College of Engineering as compared with the entire top-50 list. Note that there are several areas where the college is performing near or better than the top 20; however, it is also clear that there are some areas that need significant improvement. The college will need to direct its improvement activities on these areas during the next decade to achieve its top-20 objective.

It is also instructive to see just how well the average and best programs are performing in the areas where the College of Engineering needs to improve. While achieving the best performance may be out of current reach, achieving average performance would appear to be quite reasonable and would move the college to or near the top-20 objective.

The data predict that the college can achieve this goal. Of critical importance is the understanding that achieving this goal will help the College of Engineering to become a key contributor to the economic development of the State of Iowa.

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