To our Swanson School community,
Welcome to the 2026–2027 academic year! Each fall brings renewed energy and possibility to campus, but this year carries special meaning as we celebrate 180 years of engineering education at the University of Pittsburgh. For generations, Pitt engineers have helped build what comes next, and we have a responsibility to carry that legacy forward.
I especially want to recognize our new students – 608 first-year undergraduates from 37 states and 13 countries, along with 165 new graduate students from 18 states and 18 countries. It was wonderful to welcome both cohorts during orientation week and share their excitement about what lies ahead. I extend a warm welcome as well to our new faculty and staff beginning their first academic year at Pitt.
This fall, we also begin advancing the priorities outlined in our strategic plan, which build upon established strengths across the Swanson School: immersive educational experiences, collaborative research and innovation, sustained partner engagement, and collective excellence. For example, the Swanson School moved to No. 42 among engineering graduate programs nationally while remaining among the nation’s top 25 public engineering schools; research expenditures reached a record $63.5 million; and our faculty earned 41 patents, representing 38 percent of all patents issued to the University. Those measures reflect both our growing national standing and the scale and reach of our academic and research enterprise.
The numbers are only one way to measure our progress. One of our goals is to make high-impact experiential learning part of every student’s Swanson experience. For example, NASA selected Pitt as one of eight academic institutions worldwide to track Artemis II, giving students and faculty the opportunity to participate in a historic mission from the roof of Benedum Hall. Our ASCE chapter placed first overall at the Mid-Atlantic Student Symposium, while Panther Racing earned its best-ever third-place finish at Formula SAE Michigan. These are the kinds of experiences that let students test what they know, work as a team, and learn by doing.
That same emphasis on putting ideas into practice extends to faculty research just over the past few months. Pitt joined West Virginia University, Carnegie Mellon University, and more than 60 regional partners in the Resilient Energy Technology and Infrastructure Consortium, selected for an NSF Engines award of up to $160 million over the next decade. That regional collaboration directly supports our strategic goal of establishing a national flagship for energy solutions. Swanson researchers also developed a framework to help cities treat and reuse rainwater, reduce pressure on aging sewer systems that can send untreated sewage into local waterways during the kind of heavy storms we experienced this summer.
These accomplishments depend on students, faculty, staff, and partners working across disciplines and organizations – the kind of collaboration our strategic plan is designed to strengthen. As we celebrate 180 years, I look forward to seeing what our community accomplishes together in the year ahead.
Sincerely,
Michele V. Manuel, PhD
U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering