About

The University of Michigan-Dearborn was founded in 1959 thanks to a generous gift of 200 acres and $6.5 million from Ford Motor Company. UM-Dearborn was established to train, educate, and prepare engineers and administrators to join the ranks of the thriving automotive industry in Metro Detroit. Because of this, CECS has always placed a strong emphasis on co-op and experiential learning.

The mission of the College of Engineering and Computer Science is to be a leader in providing quality undergraduate and graduate programs in an environment integrated with practice, research, and continuing professional education, in close partnership with the industrial community.

We value the success of our students.

• Our students have the passion, talent, energy, and character to thrive as engineers or computer scientists. They are from all genders, and from all socio-economic, racial, ethnic, religious, nationality, and LGBTQ communities. We offer small classes in select upper-division courses where students benefit most from access to talented faculty. Whether undergraduate or graduate programs, our faculty, and staff exceed expectations in creating respectful, inclusive, collegial, and academically exceptional learning environments that ensure each student has opportunities to realize their potential.
• Our project-based, experiential learning approach to education produces engineers and computer scientists who find innovative solutions that actually work and have societal value. We use new teaching methods, supplemental instruction, and augmented academic advising to enhance student success. Our graduates avoid being constrained by ‘it has always been done this way’ by learning the analytics behind the technologies and becoming adept at the Design-Build-Test process used by industry for managing challenging projects. This project-based educational model extends to graduate education where students apply knowledge learned in classrooms and laboratories to real-world, socially and economically-relevant problems.
• Our Engineering Honors Program rewards students who participate in experiential co-curricular opportunities like co-ops or internships, a competitive engineering or computer science team, a research project with faculty, or commit to near-peer coaching in a K-12 computer programming class or a First Robotics Project.
• Our alumni draw upon their career experiences to mentor our students, advise on the effectiveness of our academic programs, and help with outreach. Our relationship with alumni extends beyond their graduation. Within the limits of our resources, we provide advising and other services commensurate with promoting lifelong learning.
• Our industry partners provide students with co-op and intern opportunities, sponsor student competitive teams, and offer post-graduation employment. We welcome opportunities to collaborate in industry-relevant research both in our laboratories and in industry’s laboratories.
• Our emphasis upon experiential learning is facilitated by new Student Projects and Engineering Fabrication centers with instructors who qualify students on the safe and effective use of modern prototyping technologies. A 122,000 sf Engineering Laboratory Building, to be completed in 2020, will further enhance experiential learning by offering modern, flexible, classrooms and laboratories in a student-centered, technology-driven environment.

We value innovation and creativity. 

• Our faculty conduct research side-by-side with undergraduate and graduate students, collaborate in teams to tackle complex problems with practical answers and deliver work that matters. Research enables faculty to remain current in their disciplines, strengthens our relationships with the industries who sponsor our research and benefit from its products, and exposes students to the most creative and innovative aspects of engineering and computer science.
• Faculty and students create novel, patentable ideas, license their technologies, and explore new business possibilities, exposing students to the entrepreneurial process. Faculty who experiment with new engineering pedagogies challenge us to become more effective teachers through their findings and examples.

Most importantly, we value the ethics and integrity of the engineering profession and value safety in all of our practices and designs.