Parking structures and students Residence halls are not the only incoming changes to the modern legacy of Tarleton State University. Within the next two years, the Tarleton Engineering department is hoping to expand the number of degrees offered. As it stands now, the only degree plans within the department are Environmental Engineering, and Engineering Physics. Dr. Denise Martinez hopes to see this change soon.

“These are somewhat niche programs,” Martinez said. “A lot more people are starting to get into Environmental Engineering, but many people are still struggling to understand what Engineering Physics means, since it’s not [a degree] you read about every day in the paper.”

The engineering department is waiting for approval from the Board of Regents to add three new degree programs within the next two years. If approval is granted, two programs will be added within the 2014 school year, and a third in the 2015 school year.

“We’re applying to add an Electrical Engineering degree, and a Civil engineering degree,” Martinez said. “We’ll add the Mechanical Engineering degree in two years.”

With the addition of these three programs, the engineering department could potential draw a larger amount of attention to Tarleton as a university that offers degrees with national accreditation. These potential changes are already affecting current engineering students, and Martinez hopes they will affect the University’s prospective student list as well.

“The current students are excited about it, as far as I’ve been hearing. They like the idea of having the mainstream programs and name recognition,” Martinez said. “And that’s what it’s going to get us with prospective students too– We’re not on a lot of people’s radar to come to Tarleton because we don’t have those main engineering degrees.”

Martinez expects that this will change, pending the approval by the Board of Regents.

“We’ve got a track record of producing really good engineering students,” Martinez said. “Our kids are getting jobs in competitive markets, and a lot of them are getting into Grad school. We’ve had kids join Graduate programs at A&M, at MIT, we’ve had some go to Stanford, so that’s an indicator of the quality of the engineering program that we have.”

The research and statistics supporting the additions have been presented, tentative plans for managing the changes have been made, and now the only thing left to do is wait on the final decision of the Board of Regents.

The potential changes to the engineering program can be added to a growing list of projects around Tarleton to draw more students in, and to increase the satisfaction of current students.