Mission, vision strategic goals and educational objectives
Mission
The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department strives to contribute to the State of Kuwait, through the education of outstanding professionals and leaders in engineering. The program will provide students with an understanding of engineering problem solving at all levels and an appreciation for engineering as a profession.
The department has three specific educational objectives as shown below:
- Technical competency: Graduates will have a sound knowledge of the fundamentals in electrical or computer engineering that allows them to analyze and solve technical problems, to apply hardware and software tools, to create and evaluate technical products, to learn independently, and to succeed in the workplace and in graduate school.
- Engineering perspective: Graduates will be capable of understanding complex projects including their evolution and abstraction and the optimization of associated decisions and risk, both locally and globally.
- Professional skills and knowledge: Graduates will have the ability to communicate well in both oral and written form, to interact in teams, to manage and lead technical projects, to manage their career, and to conduct themselves with an understanding of ethics, economics, and intellectual property.
Program Educational Objectives
The Electrical and Computer Engineering degree programs seek to prepare its graduates to attain the following accomplishments a few years after graduation:
- Succeed in professional career placement and practice as ethical engineers, scholars, and entrepreneurs.
- Grow their career through technical and professional activities and leadership roles.
- Contribute to society and the economy through technical products, services, communication and knowledge.
- Adapt to an ever-changing world through continued education, through graduate study, professional development activities, independent learning, or pursuit of follow-on degrees.
What is Electrical Engineering?
Electricity is everywhere so the electrical engineers are. Electric vehicles, IoT, 6G communication, smart grids, renewable energy, mini satellites, unmanned vehicles, surgery robots are a few examples for the exciting applications and areas that the electrical engineers work on.
To be more specific, electrical engineers are involved in channeling natural resources into uses for society such as heating, lighting, home appliances, consumer products, computing, sensing, control, and communication. They contribute to systems and devices for power, instrumentation, measurement, communication, management, manufacturing, transportation, etc. They are primarily concerned with the processes of generation, transmission, transformation, control, and utilization of energy or information.
What is Computer Engineering?
Smart phones, robots, computer and wireless networks, supercomputers, web technologies, mobile apps, cloud and edge computing, quantum computing, cybersecurity, blockchain, data science and engineering, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality are just a few examples for the exciting applications and areas that computers engineers work on.
The Computer Engineering Program is designed to prepare our students to work with all aspects of computers - not just software, not just hardware, but both.
- In the software world, high level languages and complex programs are often the solution to a problem.
- In the hardware world, designs also include many aspects of the physical world like temperature or noise, and often must include compromises between many opposing factors.
Computer engineering integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer engineers are trained in electronic engineering, software design, hardware-software integration, and in software engineering. It covers areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics, computer networks, computer architecture and operating systems. Computer engineers are involved in many hardware and software aspects of computing, from the design of individual microcontrollers/microprocessors, PCs, and supercomputers to circuit design.
Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Engineering vs. Computer Science
While these fields have similarities in terms of education and technical skills, there are some key differences between them in terms of professional responsibilities and research focuses. Electrical engineering involves developing and optimizing equipment, networks and devices that use or produce electric power. Computer engineering, a subset of electrical engineering, focuses on designing and creating hardware and software systems for different types of devices. Computer Science is mainly about building software for CPUs, GPUs, mobile devices and embedded systems.
Overview of the Coursework
The Electrical Engineering program provides emphasis in circuits, electronics, power, communications-signal processing, controls, electromagnetic, and computer engineering.
The Computer Engineering program provides emphasis in circuits, electronics, programming, digital systems, signal processing, embedded systems design, computer architecture and organization, and network design. Along with these program specific courses, mathematics and natural science, engineering breadth and general education courses are offered. As a critical part of the program, senior students perform graduation projects as teams implementing their knowledge by working on tangible products under the supervision of our faculty members. In addition, senior students take courses from a concentration area through major-specific electives so that they can pursue their interests more deeply.
