Undergraduate Program - General Information

The Department of Electrical Engineering offers a fully-accredited, Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering.  The Department will also offer a new Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering beginning Fall 2010.

The curricula of both degrees have a core of courses that covers the fundamentals of engineering.  Students may follow their technical interests through elective courses at the junior and senior levels. In the Electrical Engineering program, the electives are divided into two major areas or Tracks: Electro-Physics (solid-state devices and sensors, analog and digital circuit design, and microwaves and photonics) and Systems (telecommunications, automatic controls, and signal processing).  Both curricula have been designed to achieve the Department's Mission, and Educational Objectives and Outcomes.

A strong emphasis of the program is to provide a hands-on education with state-of-the-art equipment and software tools.  A majority of the required EE courses have a laboratory component including all of the freshman and sophomore level courses.  Students are required to take three project courses, one each at the sophomore (EE 296), junior (EE 396), and senior (EE 496) levels. 

Faculty

The faculty is committed to providing a first-class education. Three have received University and Manoa campus teaching awards:  two have received the Regent's Medal for Meritorious Teaching, and the third has received the Chancellor's Citation for Meritorious Teaching. 

They are leaders in their technical fields which insure that the program is at the cutting edge.  Three have achieved the Fellow membership from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).  The IEEE is the international professional organization of EEs, and the Fellow level is the highest award given to members who have made an outstanding contribution to the field.  Quality new faculty members have been recruited.  Three have received the National Science Foundation's (NSF) CAREER award, which is the most prestigious national award for new faculty members.

Faculty members have PhDs from top institutions such as CalTech, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  They come from all over the world (Italy, Argentina, Serbia, India, China, Turkey, France, India, Poland, Greece, and Denmark) to add to the cultural diversity.

Opportunities

Former EE graduates from the University of Hawai`i have become professional engineers, employed both locally and nationally. Locally, they are well represented at companies, such as Boeing, Hawaiian Telecom, Hawaiian Electric, Referentia, Spirent, Lockheed-Martin, and federal and state agencies. On the mainland, they have become successful managers and valuable technical personnel in companies such as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Raytheon, as well as smaller start-up companies.  They have continued their education to obtain MS and PhD degrees at the University of Hawai`i and at schools such as MIT, UC-Berkeley, USC, UCLA, and Stanford.

Scholarships

There many scholarship opportunities for current students including a large number from the College.  There are scholarships for prospective students from the University's Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity (SEED) program.  For prospective students from the mainland, there is the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) Program that offers qualified students the opportunity to attend the University of Hawaii at less than one-half the resident tuition rate.