This campus focuses on liberal arts, so expect to be taking more liberal arts courses then you would normally take in in another engineering program. This is a major drawback to this program. Which is why it got a D in Busy work from me. In fact if you are thinking of attending this school for engineering please consider a less liberal arts oriented school. Having done some graduate coursework, I was surprised to learn how much that I should have learned during my undergraduate coursework and how little liberal arts requirements the other graduate students had during there undergraduate curriculum. This led to me having to do a lot of catch up during the graduate work that I did take. Having said that the engineering curriculum that you do take is top notch. The instructors are focused on teaching and not neccesarily research so you will learn the material and be able to apply it across the board. I was challenged in every class and most of the work having to do with engineering is recent and not dated material.
Also don't expect too much assistance with career placement when you finally finish your degree. They seem to be concerned more with getting the 80K+ for your education and then you are on your own. This is less a problem with the engineering department then it is with the school as a whole.
Students with disabilities should also take note that the university has handicapped parking, but unfortnately because of new building construction and adding "green space" most of the disabled parking isn't really close to anything anymore except for in a few places. The office for students with disabilites is really difficult to work with and difficult to get accomidations from even with proper documentation.
Also regular parking is a major challenge as the Chiles Center is a venue for many civic events during the year such as Martin Luther King Jr. day so even though you paid $80 for a parking permit you won't get parking on those days. And yes classes are held on MLK day (or at least they were when I was attending). You will be either "booted" or towed if you do park where your not supposed to.
Financial Aid is another thing to consider as well. You may be offered a whole bunch of financial aid the first year and after that it will go away. I was told that 80%-90% of the financial aid is for freshman students. So I think they use it to attract people and then you are on your own.
I was overall pleased with the engineering education that I did get. However, I was disappointed that the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) or whoever felt the need to impose there will and make the engineering students take an extraneous amount of "busy work" courses. I was told by one of my engineering professors that when the school was founded they "added" an engineering program as an after thought so that should tell you something. They are ABET accredited and if I am not mistaken there Computer Science program just got accredited as well. I was also disappointed that I did not recieve more assistance finding work when I was finished.
As far as the busy work courses go, maybe one should expect this from a private Catholic university. I don't know it seems in retrospect that they shouldn't sacrifice much needed credit hours for engineering to have you take more philosophy, theology and history then you would normally take for a general associates degree.
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