Study: NC State Engineering is a top producer of engineering deans in the US

At least five deans of US engineering schools earned their Ph.D. from the College of Engineering at NC State, according to a study published in the quarterly National Academy of Engineering journal The Bridge.

That ranks NC State fifth nationally on a list of engineering schools that produce deans, according to the study, detailed in the article “Paths to the Deanship in American Engineering: A Snapshot of Who, Where and How.”

NC State is tied for fifth on the list with Georgia Tech, Penn State, Rice and Virginia Tech.

Dr. Richard A. Skinner, author of the study, surveyed 186 full-time and interim/acting deans of engineering in the United States who were signatories to a major diversity initiative announced by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2015.

MIT led the list, with 13 deans; followed by University of California, Berkeley and Stanford with eight apiece; Michigan with seven; and the California Institute of Technology with six.

Skinner’s study examined the demographic makeup of the group of deans and the career paths they took to reach their position.

Among the study’s key findings:

• “Nearly a third of the deans in the sample were born and/or educated overseas.”
• “Although a plurality of the deans (12) hold doctorates from MIT, the group as a whole obtained Ph.D.’s from no fewer than 83 universities — a hodgepodge of institutional heavyweights and academic up-and-comers.”
•  “Fifty-seven percent of the deans worked outside academia — in industry, government, or the nonprofit sector — at some point in their engineering careers.”
•  “The deans held a variety of academic positions immediately before ascending to their current posts.”
• “Close to two-thirds of the deans in the study were ‘outside’ hires, meaning they weren’t employed at their current schools immediately prior to their appointments.”

An article describing the study is available for download.