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Women are underrepresented in tertiary science and engineering programs in most countries globally. This chapter explores how a pioneering initiative at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania has dramatically improved the enrollment, achievement and acceptance of female students in science and engineering programs. The Special Pre-Entry Program helps young women with poor science grades in secondary national exams to gain admittance to the College of Engineering and Technology. The central finding from this case study is that poor grades at the end of secondary school do not necessarily reflect young women’s potential to perform well in higher education. By their last year of study, girls coming from the pre-entry program were on par with the rest of the class in terms of performance. Policies should therefore ensure that girls receive a quality education at the secondary level in the gender-sensitive environment necessary for them to develop to their full potential.

This chapter reviews developments at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) during the years 1945–1964. It first considers the leadership vacuum at SEAS in the immediate postwar era as well as its problem with space constraints before turning to the appointment of John R. Dunning as the school's eighth dean. It then examines the controversy surrounding the TRIGA Mark II nuclear reactor installed at SEAS, along with Henry Krumb's $16 million donation to the school. It also discusses the reconstitution of the SEAS faculty; the issue over departmental rankings and the institutional rankings derived from them; and how Columbia forfeited its early prominence in the field of computers and computer science to more nimble competitors such as MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon. Finally, it looks at SEAS's postwar students.

This chapter focuses on the growth of Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) during the years 1995–2007. It first considers the deanship of Zvi Galil and the improvement in computer science under his watch, along with his restoration of the chemical engineering department that was previously integrated into the Henry Krumb School of Mines, Mineral Engineering and Materials Science. It then examines the changes within the departments of mining, minerals and metallurgy and applied physics/applied mathematics, as well as the establishment of a department of biomedical engineering. It also discusses the reinvention of the industrial engineering and operations research department and the positive developments in the departments of electrical engineering and mechanical and civil engineering. Finally, it describes Galil's legacy and his departure in 2007.

This chapter evaluates the status of Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) as it celebrates its 150th anniversary. It first looks at the SEAS faculty, which increased from thirty-eight men in 1939 to 183, including twenty-seven women, in 2013. It then considers developments that produced a transnational SEAS faculty of research-focused applied scientists, in place of the earlier all-male teaching engineers. It also compares SEAS with other engineering schools in America and its departments with their Columbia science counterparts and discusses the entrepreneurship of SEAS graduates, Columbia's emphasis on interdisciplinary and collaborative working relationships across campus(es), the current SEAS undergraduate students and alumni, and the role played by SEAS deans in its transformation. The chapter concludes by assessing the place of Columbia in New York City and the place of engineering within Columbia.

This chapter examines developments at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) during the years 1980–1994. The departure in 1980 of William J. McGill as Columbia president marked the end of a crucial turnaround chapter in the school's history. His successor was Michael I. Sovern, the first Jew to become president of Columbia. This chapter first considers the changes implemented at SEAS's Department of Computer Science before discussing Columbia's response to the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. It then evaluates the deanships of Robert A. Gross and David H. Auston, efforts to establish bioengineering at Columbia on a firmer foundation, and the establishment of the Morris A. Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research. It also discusses the hiring of more women in the engineering faculty and the increase in SEAS admissions.

Research shows immigrants to the U.S. contribute to innovation and are more likely than natives to become startup founders. This may reflect labor market conditions and constraints related to visa regulations, or individual attributes such as ability or preferences for risk. Despite progress in understanding immigrant entrepreneurs, little attention has been paid to startup employees who “join” founders in their entrepreneurial efforts. We draw on unique longitudinal data from over 5,600 foreign and native STEM PhD students at U.S. research universities to examine entrepreneurial characteristics and career preferences prior to graduation, and founding and employment outcomes after graduation. We find that foreign PhD students differ from native PhD students with respect to individual characteristics typically associated with entrepreneurship including risk tolerance, preference for autonomy, and interest in commercialization. Foreign PhD students are more likely to express interest in becoming a founder or a startup employee before graduation, but they are less likely to become founders or startup employees in their first industry job after graduation. More nuanced analyses show these patterns hold primarily for foreign PhDs from China and India, while foreign PhDs from Western countries are similar to native PhDs with respect to career interests and employment outcomes.

This chapter discusses developments at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) during the years 1930–1945, a period marked by two momentous global events: the Great Depression and World War II. In terms of higher education, it was a period of general retrenchment in the face of financial stringencies, stagnant enrollments, and wartime dislocations. For the engineering profession, the hallmarks were uncertain job prospects and a shift in the sponsorship of large projects from the private corporate sector to the federal government. For Columbia, these years necessitated shelving plans based on assumed continued prosperity. To the School of Engineering fell a leadership vacuum, curricular stasis, and the disruptions of war. The chapter considers the relationship between science and engineering at Columbia before turning to Joseph W. Barker's tenure as dean of engineering. It also looks at the engineering faculty and students of the interwar period, along with Columbia's mobilization for World War II.

This chapter offers an overview of government established and supported expert policy advisory bodies at the federal level in Australia from the 1970s to 2010. It considers firstly, why were these specialised bodies established outside the formal permanent bureaucracy? Secondly, what has given these bodies their ‘expertness’? Thirdly, what processes have they employed and how have these processes contributed both to perceptions of their expertness and their value in policy development? Fourthly, what has been their impact on policy; has it gone beyond the specific issues on which they have provided advice and affected the wider debate and agenda? Last, what do the operations and perceived success or failure of these bodies tell us about the nature of policy development in Australia and the role of expertise?

This chapter presents a history of engineering in America before Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) was established. It first looks back to the time before the founding of engineering schools or the formation of the engineering profession and the purposeful changes they wrought to the world at large. The discussion begins by focusing on the first engineering challenges encountered by North America's European settlers: altering the natural landscape earlier inhabitants had fashioned to their purposes. The chapter then turns to some of the men who played important roles in the emergence of engineering in America, including William Bradford, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Benjamin Franklin, John Fitch, John Stevens, and Robert Fulton. Fitch, John Stevens, and Robert Fulton provide two biographical links between the early story of American engineering and King's College, later Columbia University. Also considered is the state of science and technology in early American colleges, along with two key figures in the history of King's College: James Renwick and Wolcott Gibbs.

This chapter examines changes at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) during the years 1976–1980 under the deanship of Peter Likins. A professor of civil engineering and associate dean of the School of Engineering at UCLA, Likins was installed in 1976 as the tenth dean of SEAS. Although his was to be the second shortest deanship up to that time, just four years, it was also the most transformational. Likins immediately overhauled SEAS's fundraising operation, successfully raising more money than his predecessor with less going to cover costs. By the end of the decade the school had struck up relationships throughout American industry that significantly increased the number of gifts, with many of these corporate-school relationships developed through a group Likins called Columbia Engineering Affiliates that still exists today. This chapter also considers Likins's initiatives with regards to the engineering and computer science faculties before concluding with an assessment of the controversy surrounding the TRIGA Mark II nuclear reactor at Columbia.

This chapter demonstrates how the civilizing mission was expressed in a discourse that associated moral improvement with material engineering. It is concerned with agriculture and land management, public buildings, roads, town improvement, and sanitary engineering. It discusses how “natural bodies” became “political objects” through the culture of engine science, and how land, bodies, and the built environment were engineered into the forms of techno-territoriality, bio-population, and infrastructural jurisdiction.

Between 1572 and 1648 the cutting edge of military engineering science moved from Italy and France to the Netherlands where the 80 year struggle of the United Netherlands against the power of Imperial Spain proved a great school of military engineering. It also saw the start of a tendency towards professional specialisation that had already begun in Italy after 1550. Systematic mathematical training distinguished the engineers from mere artisans. Publication of text books spread knowledge of their methods but relatively modest pay encouraged emigration by engineer products of a culture oriented towards lucrative foreign markets.

This chapter examines the problems that hounded Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) during the years 1965–1975. A decade-long campus conflict began at Columbia in the spring of 1965, highlighted by protests against American military involvement in Southeast Asia and parallel actions against the university's role. Demonstrations escalated as the war in Vietnam intensified. The most disruptive events occurred in the spring of 1968, when protesters occupied five campus buildings for a week and precipitated a violent police action that led to the arrest of 705 Columbia students. These disturbances forced the shutdown of the university four weeks before the end of the semester, produced competing commencement ceremonies, and led to the resignation of Grayson Kirk as Columbia president. The chapter first considers Kirk's tenure and the engineering faculty's role in the antiwar movement before turning to William J. McGill's appointment as sixteenth president of Columbia and the moves he made for its engineering school.

African countries are faced with enormous technological challenges, but they also have access to a large pool of scientific and technical knowledge, giving them certain latecomer advantages. Current technological advances in the agricultural sector have the potential to contribute to both food security and food safety. Technology will also be important to mitigate climate change by reducing the agricultural sector’s dependence on fossil fuels and its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this chapter is to review major advances in science, technology, and engineering and to identify their potential for use in African agriculture. This exploration will also include an examination of local innovations as well as indigenous knowledge. It will cover fields such as information and communications technology, ecology, and geographical sciences. It will emphasize the convergence of these and other fields and their implications for African agriculture.