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UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering

Engineering school at the University of California, Santa Barbara

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ7864111 ↗
Source-derived summary

The UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering (CoE; formally Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering) is the engineering school and one of the three undergraduate colleges at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The College offers a mid-sized, interdisciplinary environment where innovation drives the development of both fundamental science and applied technology solutions.

As of Fall 2023, the College of Engineering had 162 faculty members, approximately 1,823 undergraduate students, and 733 graduate students.

Departments and programs

The College of Engineering comprises the following departments:

Chemical Engineering (established in 1965)

Computer Science (established in 1979)

Electrical and Computer Engineering (established in 1962)

Materials (established in 1987)

Mechanical Engineering (established in 1964)

Technology Management (established in 2022)

The college is connected to the UCSB campus through innovative multi-disciplinary/outreach academic programs:

Biological Engineering Program (BioE)

Computational Science and Engineering Program (CSE)

Media Arts and Technology Program (MAT)

Research units

UCSB Engineering is home to the nation's first NSF-funded Quantum Foundry, a center dedicated to developing materials for quantum information-based technologies. The College operates as the West Coast hub of the American Photonics Manufacturing Institute and is a key participant in the federal Next Generation Power Electronics Institute. Notably, UCSB's Materials Research Laboratory is regarded as one of the top five materials research facilities in the world. Much of this work is conducted in collaboration with UCSB's interdisciplinary research centers and institutes, which include:

American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics) in collaboration with SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

California NanoSystems Institute

Center for Bio-Image Informatics

Center for Control, Dynamical-Systems, and Computation

Center for Information Technology and Society

Center for Nanotechnology in Society

Center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering

Complex Fluid Design Consortium

Dow Materials Institute

Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies

Institute for Multiscale Materials Studies

Institute for Energy Efficiency

Interdisciplinary Center for Wide Band-Gap Semiconductors

Materials Research Laboratory

Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials

National Nanofabrication Infrastructure Network

Optoelectronics Research Group

Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center

UCSB Nanofabrication Research Center

Academics

Undergraduate programs

The college offers the B.S. degree in chemical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. The B.S. programs in chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The computer science B.S. program is accredited by the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET. Jointly with the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the college offers an undergraduate degree in computer engineering.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering” as engineering school at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Santa, Barbara and College.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2023, 1965, 1979, 1962—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1966. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Santa, Barbara and College providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering”, the useful work is to connect “engineering school at the University of California, Santa Barbara” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7864111. Authority coordinates are 34.414, -119.841. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 1965, 1979 and 1962.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering primary sources, UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering archive and Santa research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.