Electrical Engineering And Computer Science

Electrical engineering, originally taught at MIT in the Physics Department, became an independent degree program in 1882. The Department of Electrical Engineering was formed in 1902, and occupied its new home, the Lowell Building, when MIT was still located near Copley Square in Boston. The Department dedicated its present facilities in the Sherman Fairchild Electrical Engineering and Electronics complex in fall 1973, and a year later, it recognized its growing activity in computer science by changing its name to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The Department's activities in computer science, communications, and control moved into the architecturally unique and exciting Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences in Spring 2004.
The primary mission of the Department is the education of its students. Its three undergraduate programs attract more than 30 percent of all MIT undergraduates, and its doctoral programs are highly ranked and selective. A leader in cooperative education, the Department has operated the highly successful VI-A Internship Program since 1917. It has recently established a five-year Master of Engineering program, under which students stay for a fifth year and receive simultaneously a Bachelor's degree and a Master's of Engineering degree.
During its history faculty and students of the Department have made major, lasting research contributions, some of which have opened up entire new fields of study.