News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Governor Bill Lee sending $1 million to Tennessee Tech for its Nuclear Engineering program.
The funding will come from the state’s Nuclear Energy Fund. Tennessee Tech Dean of the College of Engineering Dr. Joseph C. Slater said the funding will be essential in obtaining staff for the program.
“When you try to start a new program, unless you are building a program from courses that you already have you are going to need to hire new faculty,” Slater said. “And if you want to do it quickly, it’s a lot of expenses all at once and we want to get this nuclear program up very quickly.”
Slater said the funding will allow the university to aggressively hire faculty so they can teach courses as soon as possible. Slater said having adequate staff will be a key piece to the early success of the program.
“We have the program approved and we have one faculty member,” Slater said. “But that’s not enough to run an entire degree program so this is going to be extremely helpful in moving quickly in bringing it to full strength.”
Slater said even with funding it won’t be easy finding staff to fill out the program. Slater said with the rise in the importance of nuclear engineering the university will look into hiring students who complete graduate school.
“We have more and more students going to graduate school and coming out with this expertise,” Slater said. “We anticipate leveraging that for at least some of our faculty so that we can get some recent PHd. graduates from some of the best programs around the nation into our program as faculty members.”
Slater said the university will also look to acquire staff from the Oak Ridge Nuclear plant. Slater said the program has received overwhelming support. Slater said the program has already exceeded expectations as the university expected to have 10 students in the program at launch and now the program has 23 students.
