Over 100 individuals joined representatives from the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering and Houston Community College last Thursday, Feb. 20, for the first official UH/HCC Engineering Academy Information Session. The event was held at the new UH at Katy facility, which officially opened in August 2019.
Speakers included Dr. JR Rao, associate dean for engineering programs at UH at Katy, Jay Neal, associate vice president for academic affairs and chief operating officer at UH at Sugar Land and UH at Katy, John Vasselli, dean of the Engineering Center of Excellence at HCC, and Dr. Zachary Hodges, president of Houston Community College Northwest, among others. Discussion topics included an overview of the academy, degrees offered, the academy’s importance, candidate criteria and plans for the future.
Susan Thompson, HCC Program Director for Engineering & STEM Initiatives, who also headlined the event, expressed that she was very pleased with how the evening went. "In reviewing our attendees at the Information Night, it appears we had a very interested group of students, parents and community partners. Students represented Katy, Alief and Spring Branch High Schools, plus Bellaire & Kemper Schools, current HCC students, as well other college students from Lone Star, UHD, and UHV. The attendees were very interested and had great questions regarding the partnership, the qualifications required and the projects and activities planned for the fall semester," she said.
The UH/HCC Engineering Academy at Katy is a unique educational partnership between UH and HCC. Most transition programs require that students apply for admission to UH upon completing all of their academic requirements at the partner institution. The UH/HCC Engineering Academy is different in that students are co-enrolled at both institutions from the moment they are accepted into the academy.
The academy is structured such that students take all of their engineering classes with Cullen College faculty at UH at Katy and other core non-engineering courses through HCC. After completing the academy in one or two years, students transition to the UH main campus to complete their bachelor’s degrees.
The academy officially began accepting applications for its first cohort earlier last fall. Eight different degree paths will be offered to students beginning fall 2020: construction engineering, computer engineering and analytics, systems engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, industrial engineering and mechanical engineering. The first three degrees are all new bachelor’s degrees recently added to the UH catalog and were formally approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board earlier this year. These degrees will be exclusive to the UH at Katy facility, with all lower and upper-division courses being taken there.
To learn more about the UH/HCC Engineering Academy at Katy, please visit: https://www.egr.uh.edu/engineering-academies/hcc
To apply to the UH/HCC Engineering Academy at Katy, please visit:
www.hccs.edu/engineering-uh
To view more photos from Feb. 20’s Information Session, please visit:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cullencollege/albums/72157713201731026