Department Overview
The mission of the Biosystems Engineering Department is to develop and disseminate engineering knowledge to solve problems in biological systems such as agriculture, food, and forestry; natural resources; and the environment. The department, which is the only such department in Alabama, has an 85-year history of carrying out all three missions of the land-grant university: instruction, research, and outreach.
This department is unique because it receives funding through the College of Agriculture while its undergraduate students are enrolled in the Ginn College of Engineering. The department offers a B.S. degree in Biosystems Engineering. In addition, the department maintains close ties with the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences by offering a Forest Engineering option under the Biosystems Engineering degree. Although research is a primary mission of the department, graduate programs in Biosystems Engineering were eliminated by the university in 1999. Research programs of the department are conducted through the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station while outreach programs are conducted through the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.
Biosystems Engineering is the department that combines biology with engineering. The department's strengths include a long history of interdisciplinary work with other units on-campus and off-campus. Departmental programs are focused on serving a unique and economically important clientele; i.e., this is the department on campus that concentrates engineering expertise on problems in agriculture, forestry, natural resources, and other biological systems. Faculty in Biosystems Engineering routinely collaborate with other researchers in Poultry Science, Agronomy and Soils, Horticulture, Animal and Dairy Sciences, Fisheries and Allied Aquaculture, the AU Environmental Institute, and the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. The department has close working relationships with additional organizations such as: the world-renown USDA National Soil Dynamics Laboratory; the USDA Forest Service Engineering Research unit housed on the AU campus; the Alabama Cooperative Extension System; the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station; the Alabama Department of Environmental Management; the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs; the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; and Caterpillar Corporation.
The department is currently in a rebuilding mode with three recently-hired faculty in place and searches underway for an additional three faculty positions. This rejuvenated faculty should lead to significant increases in research and outreach productivity, extramural funding, and student enrollment.
Biosystems Engineering is currently weakened by the absence of its own graduate program. Although cooperative programs for graduate study are available through Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, it is difficult to recruit students and difficult to recruit new faculty without existing graduate programs in Biosystems Engineering. In addition, the current number of faculty is at a level that is at or below a critical mass required for equitable distribution of teaching loads, adequate recruiting of new students, and development of extramural funding opportunities. Searches are currently underway for three additional faculty positions that will raise faculty size to a more suitable level, but additional faculty are needed to meet long-term goals. Also, many of the Biosystems Engineering laboratory facilities are in desperate need of renovation and upgrades. The majority of the departmental laboratory space was constructed in the 1940's and has never been updated since its construction.
In spite of the current weaknesses in this department, many opportunities exist that make Biosystems Engineering a viable department today and in the future. These opportunities include the faculty's ability to apply engineering to solving many of the contemporary problems in the environment, Alabama's rural communities, agriculture and the food production system, and the forest products industry. The department is positioned to make much greater contributions to the AU Peaks of Excellence programs (e.g. Food Safety and Detection, Poultry, Fisheries, and Forest Sustainability) because of the abilities of faculty and students to combine engineering expertise with their foundation in biological sciences. Finally, a younger, more energetic faculty is poised to make significant increases in student enrollment and extramural funding performance.
The primary threats to the success of the department are related to university decisions about reallocation of funds and instability in state and university budgets. Although the College of Agriculture has made a commitment to maintain ABET accreditation in Biosystems Engineering by rebuilding faculty ranks and providing stable leadership, the department is still small and vulnerable to reallocation pressures. The lack of a Biosystems Engineering graduate program inhibits new faculty recruitment, growth of graduate enrollment at Auburn, and competitiveness for extramural funding. Also, the elimination of the graduate program resulted in the loss of credit hour production because most graduate courses in Biosystems Engineering are not being offered and taught.
It is difficult to directly compare Biosystems Engineering at Auburn with its peer Biosystems Engineering departments because Auburn's faculty size is much smaller than those currently ranked in the top 20 or top 10 nationally. The Auburn faculty have been able to maintain competitive levels of undergraduate student enrollment on a faculty FTE basis. For example, Auburn's Biosystems Engineering program has higher undergraduate enrollment per faculty FTE than similar programs at the following southeastern U.S. universities: University of Arkansas, Clemson, University of Georgia, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State, University of Tennessee, and Virginia Tech. When compared to top 10 Biosystems Engineering programs, such as Texas A&M or the University of Illinois, undergraduate student enrollment per faculty FTE at Auburn is about 60% of that at those other institutions. When comparing extramural funding per faculty FTE with top 10 institutions, Auburn's productivity is about 55% of those other institutions. Because Auburn's faculty size is small, teaching loads are higher than those at the top 10 institutions, which will in turn result in less time available for faculty to pursue extramural funding opportunities. Increasing the Biosystems Engineering faculty size and restarting a Biosystems Engineering graduate program at Auburn will lead to significant changes in both of these metrics. Even though the Auburn department will still be smaller than other top 10 or top 20 institutions, it has the ability to capitalize on its unique strengths and opportunities to become a regionally or nationally prominent department while making significant contributions to the Ginn College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture.
