UW to Change Name of Engineering College

June 8, 2007 - The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees today (Thursday) approved changing the name of the College of Engineering to the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

At the request of the dean, the faculty of the College of Engineering voted 43-6 in favor of recommending the change.

Two of the six curriculum-bearing departments in the college, the Computer Science and the Atmospheric Science departments, focus on applied sciences that are not normally identified as branches of engineering. Applied science uses knowledge from one or more scientific fields to solve practical problems.

"We've been thinking about a way to better integrate them and give them some recognition in our title," Dean Gus Plumb says.

The other departments are Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Civil and Architectural Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.

The designation is common among many research universities in the United States, Plumb says.