Originally known as the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering building, Maryland Hall was renamed in 1931 to recognize the Maryland General Assembly's role in establishing the School of Engineering.[3]
Engineering at Johns Hopkins was originally created in 1913 as an educational program that included exposure to liberal arts and scientific inquiry.[4] In 1919, the engineering department became a separate school, known as the School of Engineering. By 1937, over 1,000 students had graduated with engineering degrees. By 1946 the school had six departments.
In 1961, the School of Engineering changed its name to the School of Engineering Sciences and, in 1966, merged with the Faculty of Philosophy to become part of the School of Arts and Sciences. In 1979, the engineering programs were organized into a separate academic division that was named the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering. The school's named benefactor is George William Carlyle Whiting, co-founder of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.
Several departments at the school have been nationally and historically recognized. The Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering is recognized as the top-ranked program in the nation. The Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering has consistently ranked as one of the top 5 programs nationally by U.S. News & World Report in recent years.
The Engineering for Professionals (EP) program is a part-time program offering on-site and online options at the Whiting School. EP offers master's degree programs and courses in 21 distinct disciplines.
The Johns Hopkins University first offered courses to working engineers in 1916, held "Night Courses for Technical Workers" in response to the potential for United States involvement in World War I. The part-time undergraduate engineering program realized its largest enrollments for a time after World War II when returning servicemen and women received GI Bill benefits for a college education.
Until the late 1950s, part-time courses were primarily offered at the undergraduate level on the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus. In 1958, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) began to offer advanced technical courses at the graduate level with credit toward Johns Hopkins academic degrees under the auspices of that institution's Evening College.
By 1963, APL established a formal center for the Evening College to meet growing demand. Over the years, the number and variety of engineering and applied science courses and master's degree program expanded, so that by 1983 five master's degrees were offered at the APL Education Center: Applied Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Numerical Science, and Technical Management.
In 1983, the APL-based programs came under the oversight of the re-established engineering school at Johns Hopkins, the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering. At that time, eight additional degree programs were added: undergraduate programs in Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering and five master's degree programs in Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Materials Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Johns Hopkins professionals engineering education has changed its name several times to reflect added programs, advancing technology, and a changing workforce. Its name was the Part-Time Engineering Program from 1983 to 1987, Continuing Professional Programs from 1987 to 1992, Part-Time Programs in Engineering and Applied Science from 1992 to 2004, Engineering and Applied Science Programs for Professionals from 2004 to 2008,[6] and Engineering for Professionals from 2008 to the present. Also, several degree programs have changed their names to reflect changes in focus, and in several cases, concentrations in existing programs have become new programs in their own right.
Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute[9] is the newest addition to the graduate programs affiliated with Johns Hopkins. The Institute is the "university's focal point for research and education in information security, assurance and privacy." JHUISI is the only Institute[clarification needed] in the Whiting School with an academic degree program, offering the Master of Science in Security Informatics (MSSI).[citation needed]
