Engineering school looks to offer nuclear emphasis (columbiatribune - Engineering College Chennai)

It’s the latest move in a tussle between administrators and the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, which is currently housed under MU’s Graduate School.

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Administrators have said NSEI will close after its last student graduates and will ultimately be replaced with a larger, more interdisciplinary program. The idea is to allow the College of Engineering to move forward with nuclear engineering offerings even as NSEI is phased out.

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That means, in the interim, two separate entities, NSEI and the college, both would be offering master’s and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering. NSEI offers those degrees with emphases in medical physics, health physics or power.

The College of Engineering would then offer the degree with another emphasis in an area yet to be determined.

Because it is adding an emphasis area and not an entirely new degree, creating the College of Engineering program does not require the type of approval process needed when new degrees are created, MU Provost Brian Foster said.

But Sudarshan Loyalka, a curators’ professor in NSEI, said he fears such a move will be confusing and dilute nuclear engineering at MU.

“This is, in my view, an outrage,” he said. “We have a strong program already in place, which has been working extremely well. Starting something of this type does not serve the students, the faculty or the community. There is no argument or rationale behind it. It is totally unwarranted.”