Fire Protection Engineering Becomes a Department

At a Town Hall meeting held this spring, Provost Carol Simpson announced that the university’s internationally recognized Fire Protection Engineering program was being elevated to the status of a full department. The program was created in 1979, when WPI began offering the nation’s first master’s degree in fire protection engineering through its Center for Firesafety Studies.

Simpson also announced that Kathy A. Notarianni ’86, ’88, the former director of the Center for Firesafety Studies, was appointed head of the new department and named a tenured associate professor of fire protection engineering. Notarianni plans a number of initiatives, including updating the curriculum, enhancing the department’s Ph.D. program, and establishing a center for fire research to build an active and productive research program. “Since its founding 26 years ago, our program has developed an outstanding international reputation for educating leaders in the field of fire protection engineering,” she noted. “As we move forward in our second quarter-century, the goals will be to maintain the momentum within the curriculum and to grow an internationally known research program in a broad range of fire protection engineering and interdisciplinary areas.”

In May, the department strengthened its ties with commercial and industrial property insurer FM Global, building on a working relationship well into its third decade, by extending their collaborative fire research agreement through 2007. FM Global will continue to provide support for the FM Global Scholar, Nicholas Dembsey, associate professor of fire protection engineering, and a WPI graduate student. Since 2003, FM Global has contributed more than $600,000 in equipment and funding to WPI, including state-of-the-art fire propagation apparatus for WPI’s fire science laboratory.

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Last modified: Aug 23, 2005, 14:59 EDT