Tuskegee University, the historically Black educational institution in Alabama, announced that beginning this fall it will offer a new a bachelor’s degree program in computer engineering. The new major will focus on computer hardware design and cybersecurity engineering.
The new program will be housed in the newly named department of electrical and computer engineering. The university states that the cybersecurity engineering program will be the first of its kind at a historically Black educational institution. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that in 2016, there were more than 200,000 jobs in the cybersecurity field that were unfilled.
Besides incorporating existing electrical, computer science and mechanical engineering courses, the degree program includes 22 credit hours of new computer engineering courses. The addition of these courses also results in a new computer engineering minor available to computer science students, and a new computer science minor for electrical engineering students. The university will restrict enrollment in the new degree program to 25 students per year.
Heshmat Aglan, dean of the College of Engineering, stated that “our new computer engineering program positions Tuskegee University in a unique niche to provide leadership in cybersecurity studies. Additionally, this program will provide the platform for us to expand into other emerging engineering specialties, including artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, machine learning, deep learning, autonomous vehicle technology, and embedded robotics.”
