About

Director’s welcome

Continued strength

Our faculty, students and staff have redoubled their collaborative efforts to strengthen and grow the programs in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. The school’s continued strength in research performance, expansion into new areas of research, growth in student enrollment to record levels and the development of innovative new academic programs have attracted national and international attention.

In the past few years, we have grown our faculty expertise and research efforts in energy, with a particular focus on solar technology, power systems and power electronics. With the resurgence of microelectronics manufacturing, we are also adding faculty with expertise in semiconductor materials, device and circuit design and packaging. Our goal is to become an international hub for microelectronics engineering expertise.

Annual research expenditures continue at impressive levels in an environment of increasing competition for federal funds with limited growth. Our expenditures and new awards have both exceeded $30 million for the past four fiscal years.

These amounts have more than tripled during the time of our current university president, Michael Crow, and represent more than $400,000 annually per tenured/tenure-track faculty member. The outstanding work of our faculty and their students, along with the contributions of several large research centers, have made this possible.

Our primary focus is the education of students, who are important contributors to our research. The majority of our research funding supports our students. In addition to graduate students working on sponsored project research, we engage undergraduate and even high school students in our research labs. In addition to externally sponsored projects, we have a variety of fellowships, scholarships and research stipends for all levels of students provided by gifts from generous alumni, corporations and friends.

Our academic programs have grown significantly over the past few years from about 1,200 students a decade ago to more than 3,500 in Fall 2023, including more than 280 doctoral students. This large doctoral enrollment is consistent with our strong research expenditures, as well as our faculty’s focus on recruiting students and bolstering the reputation of our programs. Our graduate programs remain highly recognized: Our electrical engineering graduate program was ranked No. 36 in the country by U.S. News and World Report for the 2024 edition, No. 17 for our undergraduate program and the online delivery method of the master’s degree program ranked No. 2 in 2023.

Our undergraduate program’s online delivery method has enabled an unprecedented tripling in undergraduate enrollment to more than 2,500 in a decade. This delivery mechanism for the existing electrical engineering program is the first bachelor’s degree-level engineering program accredited by ABET in a 100% online format. This ability to use technology to allow underserved students to access our programs has clearly been successful. More than 40% of our online enrollment consists of veteran and active military students. Leveraging technology to provide innovations in our academic programs further improves the student experience.

We continue to accelerate our progress through aggressive faculty hiring. The extraordinary efforts of our dedicated faculty, staff and students drive the success of our school. Our program and school have a bright future.

Stephen M. Phillips, PhD, PE

Professor and Director, School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering

School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at a glance

Research: $43.4 million (FY23)
Enrollment: 3,565 (Fall 2023)
Undergraduate enrollment: 2,528
Graduate enrollment: 1,037
Faculty: 80 tenured/tenure-track

U.S. News & World Report rankings

#2 Online Master’s Programs
#17 Undergraduate Programs
#36 Graduate Programs

View all rankings

Publications

View the latest annual reports, catch up with alumni and department news and connect with the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. 

Contact the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
Arizona State University
P.O. Box 875706
Tempe, AZ 85287-5706
Goldwater Center 208 [map]
[email protected]
(480) 965-6238

Industry

We are committed to having a large impact on the electrical industry.