History of the Faculty of Engineering

The Faculty of Engineering was established in 1912 with the permission of the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet the 5th, as part of the American Robert College which had been founded in 1863 as the first American college to be instituted outside the boundaries of the United States. The president of Robert College was Caleb Gates at the time with Lynn A. Scipio as the director of the engineering unit. The first class accepted in 1912 had nine students, and twenty-eight students registered the following year.
 
In 1928, the graduates of Robert College Engineering School obtained the license to work as professional engineers provided they were successful at final exams issued by the Turkish Faculty of Engineering. Robert College became the exclusive school that taught Mechanical, Electrical and Mining Engineering besides Civil Engineering in 1934. During 1937 to 1947, 386 engineers graduated, 79 of who were electrical engineers. In 1957, Robert College was recognized by the Turkish Ministry of Education as an institution of higher learning, giving it the status of a university. That same year, as a first, two female students enrolled in the Engineering School. In 1963, the Faculty of Engineering moved to the newly built Perkins Hall which continues to host some of the engineering departments today.
 
At the time it obtained the status of a university, the School of Engineering was offering the B.S. degree in Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. In 1958, the Department of Chemical Engineering was established and graduate programs, leading to the M.S. degree in all four fields of study, were launched. Robert College along with its School of Engineering was transformed into Boğaziçi University in 1971 and was thus turned over to the Turkish government. The Department of Industrial Engineering was founded in 1973 and doctoral programs in all the five fields of engineering were initiated in the same year. The same year the School of Engineering was transformed into the Faculty of Engineering. In 1981, the Department of Computer Engineering was established to constitute the sixth department of the Faculty of Engineering. Since 1982, graduate studies have been administered by the Institute for Graduate Studies in Science and Engineering.