Consortium Advisory Member Dr. Mohammad Ilyas

 

Florida Atlantic University Dr. Mohammad Ilyas Associate Dean of Graduate Studies 500 NW 20th Street Boca Raton, Fl 33431 Email: ilyas@fau.edu Phone: (561) 297-3454 Fax: (561) 297-2659 web: http://www.fau.edu/

FAU is a rapidly growing, comprehensive public university with an enrollment of approximately 25,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Organizationally, it is most notably characterized by what has come to be known as its distributed campus structure in which the university's programs and services are geographically dispersed while being academically, technologically and administratively linked. This structure has been developed in order to best meet the institutional mission which is to provide public access to higher education along with the necessary support services to an unusually large service area comprising six counties spread over 100 miles along Florida's southeast coast.

Full-service FAU campuses are located in Boca Raton, Davie, downtown Fort Lauderdale, Jupiter and Port St. Lucie. The Open University and Continuing Education Division also in Fort Lauderdale, and SeaTech, an ocean engineering research and graduate education center in Dania Beach, complete the sites of operation. The central administration of the university is headquartered on the Boca Raton campus, the oldest and still largest of all FAU locations.

Academically, the university is organized into eight colleges: the College of Architecture, Urban and Public Affairs; the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters; the College of Business; the College of Education; the College of Engineering; the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College; the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing; the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. Through these colleges, FAU offers 76 undergraduate majors, 68 masters programs and doctoral degrees in Business Administration, Chemistry, Comparative Studies, Complex Systems and Brain Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Leadership, Electrical Engineering, Exceptional Student Education, Mathematical Sciences, Mechanical Engineering, Nursing, Ocean Engineering, Physics and Psychology. Of additional particular interest is a new program in medical sciences offered in cooperation with the University of Miami School of Medicine. Students in this program take their first two years of medical school at FAU and complete their clinical studies at Miami.

FAU's commitment to the educational needs of all constituencies in its service area is evidenced by the work of the Division of Open University and Continuing Education (OUCE), and of the Lifelong Learning Society (LLS). Through OUCE, in excess of 24,000 students take classes, seminars and workshops in professional training, test preparation, personal growth, languages, investment management and many other pursuits. LLS, the largest organization of its kind in the country, serves 22,000 intellectually vital individuals over the age of 60. They take non-credit, personal enrichment courses in every conceivable area of human inquiry, designed specifically for this program and taught by regular FAU faculty. This organization and its activities have been so successful that active LLS chapters now exist on four FAU campuses.

Research and scholarship play a vital role in fulfilling the mission of the university. In addition to the many research projects and other creative endeavors being conducted by individual faculty, more than 30 centers and institutes dedicated to specific disciplines and areas of investigation are in operation. Some examples in the fields of science and technology are the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, the Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, the Florida Center for Electronic Communication and the Institute for Ocean Systems Engineering. Other areas of specialized pursuits can be found in the Anthony James Catanese Center for Environmental and Urban Solutions, the Stuart-James Research Center with on-line access to business data including census tracking information, the Carl DeSantis Business and Economics Center for the Study and Development of the Motion Picture and the Christine E. Lynn Center for Caring.

The FAU Research Park, a thriving complex of nine buildings occupied by twenty five tenants on 60 acres of the Boca Raton campus, provides additional opportunities for research. A number of faculty and graduate student projects are being carried out in cooperation with various concerns located there. The Research Corporation, FAU's technology transfer organization, has its headquarters in the Park.

FAU recently completed a comprehensive institutional self-study for its ten-year reaffirmation of accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. It can be accessed at http://www.fau.edu/sacs. FAU is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award Associates, Bachelors, Masters, Specialists and Doctoral degrees.