The University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering (formerly known as the J.B. Speed Scientific School) has been selected as an “executive school” by General Electric. This is an honor shared by only 47 other schools and only 2 from this region: the University of Cincinnati and Indiana University. No other school in Kentucky has met GE’s standard of recognition.
The institutions that make GE’s list are strong in research, diversity and academics. The school’s mission and vision statements reflect those qualities. Newburg’s Appliance Park certainly helped Speed School’s cause, too, because GE takes location into consideration when making this decision.
Because graduates from the school are compatible with the General Electric corporate culture, this probably means more employment opportunities for University of Louisville students. That will start with more internship and co-op opportunities. New hires will have the chance to enter leadership programs and have possibilities for employment advancement within the company.
The two organizations already work together on projects and some instructors teach at Appliance Park. This announcement serves to strengthen that connection. According to Neville Pinto, Dean of the Speed School, “70% of GE’s engineering hires are from executive schools.”
Pinto also said that he expects there will be more ways to partner with the firm given the new designation. For example, there’s the recently announced FirstBuild micro-factory that GE is planning to put on UofL’s downtown Belknap campus. The micro-factory is a first for the company.
Speed School is a nearly 90 year old institution dedicated to chemical, civil, computer, electrical, industrial and mechanical engineering as well as bioengineering. The school started as a memorial to industrialist James Breckenridge Speed using money from an endowment by his children Dr. William S. Speed and Olive Speed Sackett.
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