Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department Timeline

1909

Department of Electrical Engineering is established; the department’s first home, the Engineering Annex, opens

1913

Claron Hutchison is the first African American EE department graduate

1915

The telephone lab is created; first courses in telephony and telephone engineering are offered

1916

First courses in radio and telegraphy begin

1922

Frank D. Paine coins the name VEISHEA for Iowa State’s spring festival

1925

Edd R. McKee is awarded the department’s first master’s degree

1932

Oral A. Brown is awarded the department’s first PhD

1936

Department receives ABET accreditation

1937

Alice A. (Churchill) Camerlengo is the first female EE graduate

1939

Clifford Berry co-creates the world’s first electronic digital computer

1949

Warren B. Boast and John D. “Jack” Ryder construct the AC Network Analyzer

1950

Electrical Engineering Building (later renamed Coover Hall) opens

1957

Biomedical electronics graduate program is initiated

1959

The high-speed, digital Cyclone Computer is completed

1959

The first courses in analog and digital computers are offered

1971

David C. Nicholas invents the encoding process for fax machines

1972

Thomas M. Whitney, alumnus, develops first hand-held scientific calculator

1976

Computer engineering undergraduate major is created

1979

Computer engineering program receives ABET accreditation

1983

James W. Nilsson writes Electric Circuits, one of the nation’s bestselling electric circuits textbooks

1984

Department changes its name to Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

1985

Computer engineering master’s and PhD programs begin

1989

The Charles W. Durham and Marge Henningson Durham Center for Computation and Communication opens

1996

Students build the first Cybot

1999

Information assurance master’s degree program launches—one of only six in the nation at the time

2002

A voice-interactive, self-propelled, self-directed, semi-artificially intelligent robot named Octagonal Speech-Controlled, Autonomous Robot (OSCAR) debuts

2006

CyBlue, an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, is acquired for bioinformatics research

2007

Software engineering undergraduate degree program launches

2008

New Coover Hall building addition opens

2009

Department celebrates 100 Years