The Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston was a happening place this weekend — rockets launched into the sky with great puffs of smoke, robots performed amazing feats, and propeller-powered cars raced down corridors as happy shrieks filled the air.

About a thousand Houston-area girls, from grades 4-8, flooded the Cullen College and its surroundings on Saturday, March 24 for the third annual “Girls Engineering the Future Day: A STEM Event,” sponsored by Chevron.

The UH Cullen College of Engineering is several steps closer to landing a spot among the Top 50 engineering colleges in America.

The 2019 U.S. News and World Report rankings place the Cullen College on the list of the Best Engineering Schools of 2019. It moved up from #73 in the year before to #69. The ranking is shared by Clemson University, Colorado State University, Tufts University and the University of Iowa.

Industrial engineering professor Randal Sitton begins his "Engineering Systems Design" class with the same introduction each year: "This is the hardest class you're ever going to take."

It's no small claim. Most of the undergraduate students in Sitton's class are seniors, some mere months away from graduation. All have made it through the rigorous coursework, labs and exams leading up to this class. If you can call it a class.

Students at the UH Cullen College of Engineering aren't just expected to do well in their labs and classes -- engineering students are expected to work in their respective fields of study while pursuing their degrees in order to land their dream jobs after college. That's why the Cullen College's Career Center offers two Engineering Career Fairs each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, to connect students to the top employers around the country early on in their academic careers.

Life as a college student is fraught with challenges: keeping up with classes, making new friends, learning new fields of study and working jobs and internships. But imagine also having to learn a new language and adjust to a foreign culture – those are some of the added challenges faced by international students attending colleges in the U.S.

Students, faculty, alumni and friends of the UH Cullen College of Engineering gathered for breakfast tacos, drinks and games to celebrate the 2017 Engineering Homecoming and gear up for the UH Football game against East Carolina. 

In addition to catching up with old friends, attendees enjoyed mimosas and Bloody Marys provided by the Engineering Alumni Association and entered to win raffle prizes that were announced throughout the event.

Proving that high-level research isn’t just for graduate students, roughly 250 UH undergrads presented their research findings at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Day. The event attracted nearly 800 guests to the Rockwell Pavilion to hear poster presentations and oral pitches from student researchers.

Throughout the Cullen College of Engineering new faces and brilliant minds are joining the faculty in the 2017-2018 school year. The Cullen College proudly welcomes them to its ranks of excellence in academia.

Clean energy research in the UH Cullen College of Engineering was the subject of a front page story in last Sunday's Houston Chronicle, which explores why the city of Houston is failing to draw new tech ventures for a world shifting away from the use of fossil fuels.