Engineering school looks to offer nuclear emphasis

From Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune: Engineering school looks to offer nuclear emphasis
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/may/09/engineering-school-looks-offer-nuclear-emphasis/

The University of Missouri’s College of Engineering is in the process of coming up with new graduate-level nuclear engineering degree offerings, sidestepping the existing nuclear engineering program on campus.

It’s the latest move in a tussle between administrators and the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, which is currently housed under MU’s Graduate School.

Administrators have said NSEI will close after its last student graduates and will ultimately be replaced with a larger, more interdisciplinary program. The idea is to allow the College of Engineering to move forward with nuclear engineering offerings even as NSEI is phased out.
That means, in the interim, two separate entities, NSEI and the college, both would be offering master’s and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering. NSEI offers those degrees with emphases in medical physics, health physics or power.

The College of Engineering would then offer the degree with another emphasis in an area yet to be determined.

Because it is adding an emphasis area and not an entirely new degree, creating the College of Engineering program does not require the type of approval process needed when new degrees are created, MU Provost Brian Foster said.

But Sudarshan Loyalka, a curators’ professor in NSEI, said he fears such a move will be confusing and dilute nuclear engineering at MU.

“This is, in my view, an outrage,” he said. “We have a strong program already in place, which has been working extremely well. Starting something of this type does not serve the students, the faculty or the community. There is no argument or rationale behind it. It is totally unwarranted.”
Foster said he hopes NSEI faculty would be involved in the discussions creating the new nuclear engineering track, but so far, they have not been included.

Engineering Dean James Thompson held a meeting yesterday to begin planning details of the program. The NSEI faculty members were not invited, nuclear engineering Professor Mark Prelas said. He was not aware of details of any new nuclear engineering program.

NSEI has been on the chopping block since March 12, when administrators announced it would cease to exist on March 15. They backed away from that timeline after pushback from students and alumni