Wake Forest’s Engineering program, a sustainability powerhouse, earns milestone accreditation

Wake Forest’s Bachelor of Science in Engineering program is unique among its peers, as the only such program in an undergraduate-only department with a curriculum grounded in the liberal arts tradition at a research university. The majority of its faculty are women, students in the program come from diverse backgrounds, and the curriculum is innovative and interdisciplinary.

Now, just five years after opening its doors, this impressive program has achieved an important milestone: accreditation. Earlier this month, Founding Chair of the Engineering Department and CEES board member Dr. Olga Pierrakos announced the program is officially accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. The accreditation is retroactive for the graduating Wake Forest engineering classes of 2021 (the program’s inaugural class) and 2022.

“This is truly tremendous news, especially when considering that the founding team arrived five years ago (six weeks before students arrived) and we had no website, no curriculum, no equipment, no vision and identity,” said Pierrakos in the official announcement. “We have come a long way and feel immensely blessed for the collaborative partnership with so many parts of Wake Forest University.”

CEES is an integral part of that collaborative partnership. Nearly half of the full-time Engineering faculty are CEES affiliates who study sustainability-related topics, ranging from green technologies and unmanned sensor systems for environmental monitoring, to wastewater treatment and public health, to statistical modeling of drought and other aspects of water cycling using satellite data. In collaboration with other CEES faculty across the Wake Forest campus, they also lead undergraduate and graduate student research locally and abroad.

“Congratulations to our colleagues in the Engineering Department on this milestone achievement,” said Stan Meiburg, Executive Director of CEES.  “Engineering is a cornerstone of efforts to produce sustainable solutions to so many challenges, and collaborations throughout Wake Forest with the Engineering Department are only going to increase in the years ahead!”