Department of Engineering

The earliest official recommendations regarding Engineering at an Australian University date to 1849 i.e., prior to the establishment of the University of Sydney in October 1850. In September 1849, a Select Committee appointed by the New South Wales Government recommended that a professor of Experimental Philosophy and Civil Engineering be one of the five foundation professors appointed. A report of a committee tabled at the Senate meeting of 23 December 1881 listed mechanics and engineering under the School of Natural Philosophy.

Reference is made to the Department of Engineering in University By-Law 137 adopted by the Senate on 22nd June 1882. The provisions made by Senate at that meeting came into operation in March 1883. [University Calendar 1882-1883, p.6]

Engineering formed part of the newly created Faculty of Science (1882). At the beginning of March 1883, the first classes in engineering were held in the Main Building.  The classes were attended at the opening by three matriculated students who were candidates for the engineering certificate, and by seven non-matriculated students. The lecturer in engineering was Mr William Henry Warren, who had been appointed in December 1882 and commenced duties on 1 March 1883 following a decision by Senate to carry out significant revisions to the teaching of the University. These revisions, which provided for the establishment of Schools of Medicine, Science and Engineering, were unable to be implemented in 1881 for lack of staff, accommodation, and facilities.

A Chair of Engineering was not established until 1884 in response to a submission from Warren. It was the Senate's intention in establishing engineering education at the University in 1882 to award Certificates in Engineering, viz. Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Mining Engineering. However, in its Report of Senate for the year 1884, Senate noted that "during the year, the By-laws regulating the curriculum for a diploma in Engineering have been revised. It has been deemed advisable to grant the Degrees of Bachelor and Master of Engineering instead of certificates in the various branches as hitherto determined, and to shorten the curriculum from four years to three. In November the position of the Lecturer in Engineering was raised to that of a Professor in consideration of his being the head of a distinct Department of instruction."

In 1891 the branch of Electrical Engineering was added and in 1900 the Department of Engineering had the three branches of Civil Engineering, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, and Mining and Metallurgy.

In 1883, when the new engineering curriculum was introduced, the Senate reported that 'great inconvenience [had] been felt during the year, both by the lecturers and the students, through the deficiency in accommodation for lecturing purpose ... the room occupied by the Lecturer in Engineering [was] much too small to contain the apparatus required for the illustration of his lectures...'  A temporary structure was erected at the rear of the main building, and in 1885 classes moved to a fairly commodious low white building with a verandah facing Parramatta Road, on a site now partly occupied by the Holme Building. Early in 1909 the new building for the PN Russell School of Engineering was sufficiently completed for the work of the school to be conducted within its walls. The building was formally opened by the Governor on 20 September 1909.

The building was an outcome of the PN Russell benefactions. [for more information on the Peter Nicol Russell Endowment for the Department of Engineering see the University Calendar, e.g. 1920, p.303 ff]

In 1920, as part of an academic restructuring, the University created six new faculties including the Faculty of Engineering, separating Engineering off from the Faculty of Science after nearly 40 years of association. Thus the Department of Engineering within the Faculty of Science ceased to exist. However, a Department of Engineering continued to exist within the new Faculty. The two faculties remained closely allied in teaching and outlook. The other faculties created at that time were Agriculture, Architecture, Dentistry, Economics and Veterinary Science.