The Faculty of Engineering at Stellenbosch University is celebrating its 80th birthday this year – a huge milestone in the history of the Faculty. Starting as a small Afrikaans-only department within the Faculty of Mathematics and Physical Science in 1941, with 42 first-year students, and staff consisting of one professor (Prof HL Reitz), and two senior lecturers (Dr RL Straszacker and Dr JM le Roux), the Faculty has grown into a fully-fledged, multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural engineering faculty which is currently one of the largest faculties at Stellenbosch University, with over 4000 students and 300 staff. Over this time, the Faculty has weathered many storms, including a world war, huge political upheavals, sanctions, a water crisis, COVID, and most recently, an electricity crisis – all of which have contributed to shaping the Faculty into its present form as one of the leading research-intensive engineering faculties on the African continent.
The early years
While engineering subjects were already introduced into the BSc degree in 1941, it was only in January 1944 that the Faculty of Engineering was formally constituted, … discover more about our 80 years of excellence by following this link: https://www.eng.sun.ac.za/about-us/80th-anniversary/
Photo: A collage of historical Faculty photos from the Stellenbosch University Archive.
[Article by Prof Petrie Meyer]
