The start of the academic year also marks the beginning of a new major at Allegheny.
The engineering physics major is designed to support students who are interested in pursuing technical careers and aims to provide them with a clearer path into engineering fields. The major blends core physics principles with applied engineering skills while also offering direct experience that is extremely valuable when students apply for jobs and graduate programs, according to physics department faculty.
“For many years, we’ve had a strong engineering and physics faculty,” said Physics Professor Jamie Lombardi. “Our students have done incredible hands-on research and gone on to work at places like NASA and Johns Hopkins laboratories, but we’ve never formalized that into a dedicated engineering major. We thought it was time to change that.”
Doros Petasis, a fellow physics professor, says the major will teach students the fundamentals of physics essential for engineering.
“It’s about the applied side of physics,” Petasis said. “It gives students flexibility whether they’re heading into industry or graduate school.”
Assistant Professor of Physics Adele Poynor added that Allegheny students are already pursuing engineering careers, but often have to explain how a physics degree qualifies them.
“Now, with ALIC (Allegheny Lab for Innovation and Creativity) we are able to offer more internships and senior projects with industrial partners,” Poynor said. “Students get three semesters of real work experience.”
This major consists of 64 credits and will count as a Bachelor of Science degree. Students will first be required to take foundational introduction courses in physics and mathematics, then move on to gaining engineering competencies such as experimental design, communication and ethics. Students will apply their knowledge in internships and labs by their junior year. The senior project gives students an opportunity to work with industrial partners, providing real-world experience that will benefit them as they move on full-time jobs or graduate school, according to the college press release regarding engineering physics.
Classes in the engineering physics major will be taught by existing faculty, including Lombardi, Petasis, Poynor, Physics Professor Dan Willey and Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability Ian Carbone. As the program continues to grow, Allegheny hopes to bring in additional faculty with engineering backgrounds, according to Lombardi.
Poyner and Petasis think the engineering physics major also has the potential to attract more students to Allegheny, especially those who may have overlooked the college because of its previous lack of engineering programs. They predict that future Allegheny classes will include a dozen or more students drawn in directly by engineering.
“Engineering is one of the hot professions right now,” Petasis said. “This gives students a clearer path forward.”
Lombardi emphasized that the new program complements Allegheny’s curriculum. “Liberal arts and engineering go hand-in-hand,” Lombardi said. “We’ve had engineering representatives say they love our students and to send them to their graduate programs.”
Lombardi explained that it takes a special type of student to be an engineer.
“To be a good engineer, you not only have to be good in the hard sciences but also able to convince other people you know what you are doing, be able to work with other people, manage a budget and get things to the finish line in a certain amount of time with a certain amount of dollars that are spent,” he said. “Those are the kind of skills you learn at a liberal arts education. How to communicate, how to write, how to speak, how to make arguments and these skills are just as important as the engineering skills. I think the engineering physics major fits in beautifully at a school like Allegheny.”
The program will build on the legacy of alumni like Michelle Greiner, ’00, who works at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, and Molly Shelton, ’16, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Another graduate, Eliel Cortez, ’25, helped develop coatings for electronic materials to block electromagnetic interference. He also built a robot to apply the coatings, which are designed to shield sensitive electronics from radio noise and other disruptive signals.
“If you have a lot of radio noise or other electromagnetic noise, you don’t want it messing up your electronics,” Lombardi said.
Lombardi pointed to Cortez’s project as an example of the exciting opportunities that could come from the new major. All of these graduates, he said, are examples of what Allegheny students who have interests in STEM-related fields can hope to achieve.
Future students now have a formal academic path to follow in the footsteps of these alumni, while simultaneously carving their own unique path. Lombardi was pleased with the program’s potential.
“A lot of people benefit, our students and our department benefit, our community partners benefit,” he said. “It is a strong program.”
