Tennessee Tech’s Nuclear Engineering Program has four times the enrollment the expected after just one year of operation.
Dean of the College of Engineering, Dr. Joseph Slater, said the program currently has 45 students enrolled. Slater said the program was not expecting 40-plus students until year six of the program.
“We were a little bit conservative in our numbers because we wanted to make sure that we had achievable goals and would not be looking down and worrying about those,” Slater said. “And with these numbers, we are able to take it wherever it goes. The sky is the limit, as they say.”
Slater said the United States is behind other countries in the nuclear energy industry and believes the program will eventually play a role in addressing the industry’s demand. Slater said exceeding enrollment expectations speaks to the success the program is already seeing.
“We have a lot going on here,” Slater said. “We have two faculty starting this year. One who started in the Fall semester and another one starting coming up in January. Two chapters of the American Nuclear Society and Rivet and Nuclear Engineering that are in the process of gaining national recognition. Those are student chapters. We have our nuclear reactor simulator that has just been installed. That will be live in January, so there are students who will be able to train on a simulator that gives them the real experience of operating a nuclear reactor. We’ve got a ton going on, and it’s taking off very quickly, so we are excited about that.”
Slater said delivering a quality education is one big contributor to why the program has seen such enrollment.
“Tennessee Tech is a natural destination for a lot of college students looking for a practical, applied education,” Slater said. “We have a very solid, strong reputation with employers, but also with parents and high schools for delivering on the promise that you come to Tech, you are gonna get a practical education that will help you get a job in the workforce, and those employers appreciate that our students are very well respected and very mature right out the gate.”
Slater said students in the program will be highly sought after once they graduate because nuclear energy companies are very aggressively hiring engineers in the other engineering programs that the university has.
Slater said the state’s investment of an estimated $50 million in the nuclear energy industry has made a lot of noise, drawing the interest of students. Slater said the university is hoping to continue to grow the program even more and expects the program to have over 100 students enrolled in the next couple of years.
Slater said that since the industry is so young, graduates can rapidly climb into leadership positions in the industry.