Information for students

History of the Faculty

The Faculty began teaching in 1965 as part of a new institute, soon to become the New South Wales Institute of Technology (NSWIT). In 1987, by an Act of the Parliament of New South Wales, NSWIT was reconstituted as the University of Technology, Sydney, and commenced operation as UTS in January 1988. During 1988 and 1989, UTS amalgamated with several other institutions, and parts of institutions, and the new UTS came into being in its present form in 1990. None of the University's new partners had engineering schools and so the Faculty of Engineering has continued in essentially the same form since its inception.

The first courses led to the award of Diploma in Technology. These were extended to Bachelor of Engineering level in 1971 and the diploma courses gradually phased out. The first Bachelor of Engineering degrees were awarded in 1972. Programs leading to Master of Engineering by coursework and by research were offered in 1975. The degree of Doctor of Philosophy by research was made available in 1986, initially by arrangement with another university and, from 1988, by UTS in its own right.

In 2007, the Faculty had over 2,600 students enrolled in undergraduate programs, 1,000 enrolled in postgraduate coursework programs and 110 in research degree programs.

Other information

The Faculty publishes a Course Guide at the beginning of each academic year, which is available from the Building 1 Student Centre, located in the foyer of Building 1. The Faculty's website gives current information on all aspects of the Faculty's operations:

Location, contacts and inquiries

The Faculty of Engineering is located at City campus, Broadway, in Buildings 1 and 2. Main locations are:

• CB02.7.093: Dean and Faculty Manager
• CB02.7.105: Academic Administration Office and Industry Partnering Unit
• CB02.4.16: Engineering Outreach Office
• CB01.24.27: Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning)
• CB02.7.078: Associate Dean (International and Enterprise Development) and International and Enterprise Development Office
• CB02.5.11B: Associate Dean (Research and Development)
• CB02.6.39: Women in Engineering Program

Location of facilities

Learning and Design Centres (LDCs): CB01.25.15 and CB02.6.39

Engineering Outreach Office

The Engineering Outreach Office deals with all prospective student inquiries and is located at CB02.4.16. This connects with Building 1 at City campus, Broadway. The postal address is:

The Engineering Outreach Office is generally open from:

Monday to Friday, 9 am–5 pm

UTS Student Centres

From 2008, all inquiries from currently enrolled UTS students will be handled by the five UTS Student Centres located across the Broadway, Haymarket and Kuring-gai campuses.

Students enrolled in Faculty of Engineering degrees (undergraduate and postgraduate) are advised to direct all their course-related inquiries to the Building 1 Student Centre, located on Level 4 (the foyer) of Building 1. The creation of these five new Student Centres is a result of the reorganisation of student administration across UTS.

Key Student Liaison staff

The staff below are the key liaison staff for engineering students requiring specialist or academic advice to manage their enrolment and student candidature. All students are to direct all initial inquiries to the UTS Student Centre, where their inquiry will be processed and forwarded to the key contact staff below if the matter cannot be resolved by Student Centre staff. The staff below are located in the Faculty of Engineering Academic Administration Office, located on Level 7, Building 2. An appointment with these staff is based on referral from the UTS Student Centre or by consultation times posted at the office entry. Students who wish to meet with staff during consultation times should make initial contact with the UTS Student Centre.

Director, Undergraduate Programs

Director, Postgraduate Coursework Programs

Manager, Academic Programs Office

Manager, International and Enterprise Development

Faculty contacts and areas of interest

For further staff details see Principal faculty contacts and Academic staff groups – areas of professional interest.

Structure of the Faculty

The Faculty is not subdivided into departments or other entities. Each member of academic and support staff belongs to a Staff Group, reflecting his or her professional interests and expertise. The Group titles are:

• Infrastructure and the Environment
• Mechatronics and Intelligent Systems
• Information and Communication Technologies
• Management, Policy and Practice
• Technical Support
• Administrative Support.

The Faculty's governing body is the Faculty Board in Engineering. Reporting to the Faculty Board is the Teaching and Educational Development Committee, Research Degrees Committee, the Research Management Committee, the Results Ratification Committee, the Student Assessment Review Committee, the Library Reference Committee and the Faculty Student Conduct Committee.

The Faculty's management committees are the Executive Committee and Dean's Advisory Committee. There is also an Industry Advisory Network with membership drawn from industry, the professions and the community. In addition, the Faculty is represented on most of the University's boards and committees. Further details on governance, committee memberships and terms of reference are available from the Faculty Manager.

Additional English language, mathematics and physics requirements

The Faculty requires commencing students to undertake English language, mathematics and physics diagnostic tests so that the most effective study patterns can be advised. The Faculty reserves the right, when appropriate, to require students who are identified as needing additional support to undertake preparatory English language, mathematics and/or physics courses prior to progressing further in the course, or to restrict the level of advanced standing awarded where this is indicated as appropriate by these diagnostic tests.

Engineering clubs and societies

The Faculty has an active student society – the Engineering Society of UTS – with over 500 members. The Engineering Society supports both a social calendar as well as various professional events, and was awarded the UTS Union Club of the Year in 2004.

Further information is available from:

Centres and institutes

Institutes of UTS

The Faculty interacts closely with the following institutes at UTS:

• Institute for Information and Communication Technologies
• Institute for Interactive Media and Learning
• Institute for International Studies
• Institute for Nanoscale Technology
• Institute for Sustainable Futures
• Institute for Water and Environmental Resource Management.

Further details of all these centres, institutes and other organisations are published in the UTS: Calendar.

Engineering Learning and Design Centres

The Faculty has a strong commitment to providing an effective and supportive learning environment for Engineering students. The Learning and Design Centres are located at CB01.25.15 and CB02.6.39. They provide access to tutors for individual and small group support, reference material, and software and hardware resources, on a drop-in basis, and are open for extended hours.

Professional bodies in engineering

Engineers Australia

Engineers Australia is the principal professional body and learned society for engineers in Australia. Its membership covers all branches of engineering, with specialist colleges catering for the main fields of practice. Its headquarters is located in Canberra, with operating divisions in capital cities and regional centres. The local division, which covers UTS, is the Sydney Division. It runs an annual program of lectures, seminars and professional activities, with particular events for young engineers. The Division's office is located in Chatswood and can be contacted on telephone +61 2 9410 5600.

Corporate membership of Engineers Australia (in the grades of Member or Fellow) confers the status of Chartered Engineer and provides a listing in the National Professional Engineers Register (NPER-3). Students enrolled in courses leading to the Bachelor of Engineering degree may join Engineers Australia as Student members and, upon graduation, become eligible for Graduate membership. To attain the corporate grade of Member, certain professional competencies must be gained and demonstrated, normally in employment after graduation. For the industrial experience gained during their degree, UTS graduates may expect to receive credit towards this requirement, although some further experience is normally needed.

Engineers Australia membership is also available in the categories of Engineering Associate (normally holding a TAFE Associate Diploma or equivalent) and Engineering Technologist (normally holding a Bachelor of Engineering Science or a Bachelor of Technology degree or an Advanced Diploma).

Engineers Australia assesses degree courses conducted by Australian universities to determine whether they meet the educational requirements for membership. Accreditation of engineering courses and subjects is carried out every five years. For UTS this last occured in 2003, when all the Faculty's programs were accredited. Full details of all accredited programs are available through Engineers Australia. New programs introduced since then are due for accreditation in 2008.

Engineers Australia also manages the NPER-3, which is the only Australian register of practising professional engineers with legal recognition. A candidate for NPER-3 registration must have completed an accredited undergraduate engineering course, have practised as an engineer and be able to demonstrate competency against Engineers Australia's competency standards. Registration recognises the member's professional competence and commitment to ethical practice. It may be cited in relation to quality assurance systems and, particularly in NSW, it can provide legally established professional limitation of liability. Professional engineers normally join NPER-3 concurrently with their recognition as a Chartered Member of the Institution (CPEng).

The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia

The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA) provides advice and assistance on employment-related matters for professional engineers, scientists and managers. Student members receive the publication The Student Update three times per year, which gives practical insight into the workplace and employment issues that affect them as professional engineers. For information and student membership application forms contact APESMA on telephone +61 2 9264 9500.

Other bodies

There are a number of other national and regional associations representing particular branches of engineering. Faculty staff with interests in the field concerned are often active in these bodies and able to provide information.

Women in Engineering program

While Australian women engineers continue to make an outstanding contribution to the profession and practice of engineering here and across the world, their representation in the field continues to be low. Women's rate of participation in engineering courses nationally is now at 15 per cent. The Women in Engineering initiative was established at UTS to attract more women to its undergraduate program by communicating a broader concept of engineering and linking it with everyday applications, and the interests of women. This led to the development of curriculum resources on teaching technology to females, and a creative climate in the faculty for developing new curricula.

The program has strongly influenced the philosophy of engineering at UTS and has been a catalyst for many innovations in the Bachelor of Engineering Diploma in Engineering Practice curriculum. The Program inaugurated the Annual Australasian Women in Engineering Forum, and contributed to the ground-breaking National Review of Engineering Education, which strongly emphasised the need for culture change.

Women in Engineering at UTS now uses a range of activities to communicate with schools and engage the interests and capabilities of young women, including the annual Hands on Day and the Sydney Women in Engineering and Information Technology (SWIEIT) Speakers Program, which is jointly sponsored by UTS, IBM and CISCO. It has attracted Women in Engineering Scholarships for first-year and senior undergraduates from professional organisations in the construction and business sectors, including the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) and Zonta. It is also active in the annual International Institute of Women in Engineering (IIWE) in Paris, in which staff and students work on an intensive summer program of international engineering practice.

As well as outreach and scholarships, the Women in Engineering Program has a calendar of meetings and guest speakers and mentoring for first years by senior students, and alumni in the profession and industry. In 2006, UTS Engineering celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Women in Engineering Program, the longest-serving initiative of its kind in Australia. In 2007, a UTS alumni in civil and environmental engineering, Ms Jacinta Holmick, has been named Young Engineer of the Year by Engineers Australia.

UTS strongly welcomes female students and invites their contribution to ensuring an inclusive teaching and learning environment. Through the subjects which acconpany industrial internship, all students can share their insights into workplace cultures in engineering. The Program also supports broader cultural and equity initiatives which better enable women graduates to fulfil their potential as future engineering and managers, and as future researchers and academic leaders.

Practice-based engineering education

What does it mean?

Engineering is about devising ways in which technology can contribute to human ends, and about developing, delivering and maintaining technical systems that do so. The practice of engineering is about doing this reliably and cost-effectively, in the context of real social and economic objectives and pressures, and in a variety of business and community settings. Engineering practice embraces many technical and non-technical factors that cannot be replicated in the classroom, including the need to understand and interact with a wide range of people and their perspectives, as well as to deal with new or unexpected technical issues, and with uncertainty and risk.

Education for professional engineering must include a strong intellectual training and a strong grounding in engineering science. But over-concentration on engineering science can impart a narrow technical mindset and an education that is exclusively academic can be remote from reality. Either of these can cause graduates serious difficulty in coming to grips with the human aspects of engineering and with the demands of practise.

Practice-based engineering education requires students to experience the reality of engineering from an early stage in their professional formation – through internship. It actively relates this experience to their developing understanding of engineering theory, analysis and laboratory work, and to studies in other disciplines, and it promotes critical and creative thinking based on knowledge gained outside as well as within the University. This interaction requires that most academic staff have significant experience of engineering practice and keep it constantly refreshed. Educational programs in which students or a majority of staff do not have current experience cannot validly be called practice-based.

Practice-based education is more than practice and more than education. A university education should impart a thorough grasp of fundamental principles, a respect for knowledge, a capacity for critical inquiry and lateral thinking, a fluency in communication, a pride in excellence, and an eagerness to contribute to shaping the future. Practice-based engineering education claims that these attributes can be more effective when they have been developed in contact with the human and technical challenge of real engineering situations.

Engineering education at UTS

In Australia, the basic qualification for professional engineering is the Bachelor of Engineering degree (BE). At most universities, the BE occupies four years of full-time academic study. At UTS, as well as completing the academic program, all undergraduate engineering students must gain substantial approved engineering experience in industry or in other authentic professional settings. This experience must be distributed over the period of the course and must meet standards of quality and relevance. This experience is recognised in the award of a Diploma in Engineering Practice (DipEngPrac). The combined BE DipEngPrac degree takes five years to complete.

Graduates of most university engineering courses need up to two years' experience in industry, after graduation, before they are able to assume real responsibility. UTS Engineering graduates have already gained much of this experience, together with a real understanding of the interrelations between theory and practice, technology and human factors. They are equipped to undertake professional responsibility much sooner than graduates of other courses at other universities – often upon graduating.

The combination of formal academic learning in the University and experiential learning in the workplace is called cooperative education. UTS Engineering courses have embodied this principle for over 30 years. The courses are highly regarded in industry and, according to many reports and surveys, the graduates enjoy the highest employment rate of any engineering degree courses in Australia. UTS Engineering is by far the largest cooperative education faculty in Australia, in any discipline. Cooperative education is also well known and highly regarded in other countries, particularly in North America. UTS is a member of the World Council for Cooperative Education.

The UTS BE DipEngPrac extends the concept of practice-based engineering education into one of total professional formation and leads to the combined award of Bachelor of Engineering Diploma in Engineering Practice (C10061). Students' perception of the value of the periods spent employed in industry – the internships – is illustrated by the very high percentage of students who choose to continue to mix work and study even after completing the formal internship requirements.

Other UTS Engineering courses, undergraduate and postgraduate, are also designed to interact strongly with industry, though the work-experience requirements are mostly less structured than those of the BE DipEngPrac. In all programs, the majority of students already have significant industrial experience, or are gaining it concurrently. The Faculty has policies for maximising opportunity for its academic staff to maintain first-hand experience in industry and engages many practising engineers as adjunct teaching staff. It also strongly encourages collaborative research and consultancy with industry, and many of its research students are industry based. The predominant culture, therefore, is strongly practice oriented and this also benefits the relatively small number of students who do not yet have engineering work experience.

In all of its activities, the Faculty seeks to promote a better understanding of the role of engineering in society and to promote and support service to the community through other channels as well as industry.

Continuing professional education

Practising engineers wishing to undertake continuing professional education may, if class sizes permit, enrol into single subjects. All enrolments in this non-award basis incur full-cost recovery fees. Their successful completion creates the possibility of advanced standing credit under existing University policies, should candidates decide to enrol in a course.

Further information is available at:

In addition, in-house short courses, seminars, workshops and other professional development programs are offered from time to time, frequently in response to corporate invitations or opportunities arising from visits by international experts.

Engineers and others requiring further information on continuing professional opportunities through the Faculty should contact the Engineering Outreach Office.