The NPRE Story
The NPRE Story
The University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign is in its second century of operation
and is recognized as a national center of excellence in education. The
College of Engineering, founded in 1868, has grown and prospered with
the University, establishing itself as a productive center of engineering
research and education.
The Department of Nuclear Engineering was established in 1958 as an
inter-disciplinary program and was granted departmental status in 1986.
Its name was changed to the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological
Engineering in 1999 to reflect the three paths typically followed by
its students, and the wide variety of courses available to them. The
change was approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education at its
June 15, 1999 Board meeting.
"The name change has been in the works for a long time," said
James Stubbins, department head. "The purpose of this name change
is twofold: first, to emphasize that the nuclear engineering discipline,
as it is taught at the University of Illinois, is not just about commercial
nuclear power, and, second, to better reflect the breadth of the undergraduate
curriculum, the graduate program, and the diversity of the faculty.
"Over the last few years, the faculty has developed a modified
undergraduate curriculum," Stubbins continued. "The primary
purpose of the revised curriculum is to explicitly include two new sub-fields
or paths of study: Radiological, Medical and Instrumentation Applications,
and Plasmas and Fusion Science and Engineering. The third, the traditional
Reactor Power, Safety and the Environment sub-field, is also an option.
The explicit incorporation of the new sub-fields has been performed
to better prepare our undergraduate students for employment in radiation-related
sectors of the U.S. job market, and to better reflect the expanding
opportunities in the evolving nuclear engineering discipline in line
with faculty research interests."
© 2008 The Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois