Welcome to Fall 2025 at the UMass Amherst College of Engineering!
by Dean Sanjay Raman
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Greetings UMass Engineering Community,
I am thrilled to welcome you all to our campus for the Fall 2025 semester. I would like to extend a special welcome to those of you who are new to our community. This Fall, we are fortunate to be welcoming ~730 new undergraduate students and ~170 new graduate students, as well as eleven talented new instructional faculty members to the College. We are committed to making your experience here an extraordinary one.
As part of that commitment, we will soon be making a transformational announcement that will help shape the future of engineering education, discovery and innovation here at UMass CoE—stay tuned!
In the meantime, I am pleased to share a few exciting developments and upcoming events with you. To kick off the academic year, the College will be hosting the following welcome events:
- Graduate Student Reception — Thursday, September 4th, 5:30 to 8:00pm, under the tent in the engineering quad.
- Student Organization and Resource Fair — Tuesday, September 9th, 10:30am to 3:30pm, under the tent in the engineering quad. I will be in attendance from 1pm to 2pm for a “Meet the Deans” hour—come say hi, I would love to connect.
- Welcome Reception for Faculty and Staff — Thursday, September 11th, 4pm to 6pm, 10th floor, Campus Center.
Over the summer, UMass Amherst joined the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN)—a nationwide partnership of universities that have the shared mission to graduate engineers with an “entrepreneurial mindset”—with the key tenents of curiosity, connections, and creating value. Joining KEEN will help further expand our educational resources, as we continually evolve and enhance our academic engineering programs.
Just last month, a UMass Amherst research team led by faculty from the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation was awarded nearly $3 million from the National Science Foundation to establish the nation’s first graduate training program designed to combine nursing’s hands-on patient care with engineering’s technical knowledge.
Speaking of new programs, I would like to remind you that we are now offering our new Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Engineering as well as a new undergraduate certificate in Aerospace Engineering and a new graduate certificate in AI Engineering.
Great progress has been made on our new Sustainable Engineering Laboratories (SEL) building, which is on track to open next Fall. We realize this construction is inconvenient and are hopeful the walkways (and parking lots) will open up soon. You can view the live site camera here.
The College and the University will be hosting several career fairs this semester, including the Engineering Career Fair (Sept 25/26) and the Civil and Environmental Career Fair (Oct 1), the Building and Construction Technology Career Fair (Sept 26), the Tech Jobs and Internships Fair (Oct 9), and the Life Sciences and Biotech Career Fair (Oct 10). You can learn more and register for all of these events on Handshake.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the fact that we are in the midst of a complex time for higher education in our country, with some questioning the role of public research universities. But please know that here in the College of Engineering, we remain steadfast in our commitment to our land-grant mission of serving the people and industries of the Commonwealth and to excellence—in research and education, in innovation and entrepreneurship, and in building an inclusive community.
I sincerely look forward to connecting with you all this year and sharing more exciting news in the coming weeks. I encourage you to follow along with the College’s weekly e-newsletter as well as our Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Bluesky accounts.
Have a great semester and Be Revolutionary Engineers for All!
Sincerely,
Sanjay Raman
Dean, College of Engineering
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering