The general directives of the department can be summarized by its role in providing the most appropriate architectural program and curriculum that are truly relevant to the actual needs of the country. Our program has a wide strong base of science, humanities and engineering fundamentals. Architectural knowledge and training is built upon this strong educational foundation. Our program also focuses on developing the students’ abilities to think, analyze and identify appropriate solutions. Additionally, the department provides students with numerous opportunities to utilize effectively the most recent relevant technologies and to develop their engineering and management skills to work effectively in a business oriented work environment. Our research program is an important part of our curriculum as well as our services to the UAE community.

The current status of the department is pivoted around our past achievements over the last twenty years. Our future status is based on our continuous collective effort to develop and improve our professional and educational services to always be ahead of the society’s needs and expectations. Besides, the department has well defined plans to recruit the highest qualified faculty and staff, to develop and expands its educational facilities, and to enhance its interactive rule within the local society.

Moreover, the department’s faculty are working towards achieving a quality leap in the academic performance in all areas of services namely; teaching, advising, research, academic publishing, university development and society service. The department works hard to disseminate cutting edge relevant architectural knowledge within the UAE society and maintain its reputed academic stature within the region as well as the international front.

The realization of our department’s dynamic vision, defined mission and precise goals allow us to achieve, in the near future, a distinctive academic status that would ensure our competitive edge and being at the top. Our vision is not a constant functional vision but rather a vision that is able to accommodate future unknowns and the actual achievements over the years. In other words it’s a moving target that can be arrived at through a strategic planning that is geared towards continuous improvement. This improvement utilizes our past experiences in meeting the future challenges.

The department applies an effective self-learning philosophy with lifelong learning possibilities. The also department encourages learning-by-doing teaching innovations and teamwork. Educational outcomes assessment has become recently our means to evaluate and improve our academic services. In addition, the teaching goals are tied with the department’s research and community services plans.

In the department, the student is the center point of our efforts. We believe that the academic quality of our students is a shared responsibility between students and faculty. The department places emphasis on faculty role as facilitators for self-learning through experimentation and discovery as well as being academic advisors to guide students and provide them with the most appropriate advisement possible to achieve their academic goals.

Throughout our program, students are given opportunities to innovate and identify non-traditional solutions. Students also learn about environmentally conscious practice and natural resources conservation. Particular emphasis is also placed on professional competency and skills development not only through the curriculum but also through a well-guided practical training program designed to familiarize students with their expected future professional responsibilities after graduation.

At the Department of Architectural Engineering we believe that the academic educational process is a joint team effort and cannot be achieved through individualized inputs. Teaching is a cooperative integrated effort of faculty and teaching staff to offer integrated knowledge base that is directed towards students’ learning by doing, experimentation and teamwork. Such an academic environment enhances our efforts in areas such as capstone courses, outcomes-based learning, self-learning, long-life learning and students’ innovation abilities.

The department continuous updating and improvement of its curriculum ensure that our curriculum is among the best architectural curricula worldwide. This includes continuous revision of courses, their contents, and linking theories and competencies, skills and practices both horizontally and vertically within the curriculum. This kind of exercise gives faculty a better understanding of their role, responsibilities and commitments as well as an awareness of the curriculum goals and program outcomes.

The department of architectural engineering was established in 1981. By the beginning of the academic year 1981-1982, instruction has begun at the department of Architectural Engineering. The academic year 1985-1986 witnessed the first graduating class from the department. The architectural curriculum at UAEU is presently emerging as a benchmark program across the region and has been attracting the international attention. During the last two decades, UAEU has been only providing an architectural curriculum that is directed towards the fulfillment of the architectural professional needs of UAE society. The uniqueness of this program stems from the fact that it combines a balanced content covering both the specialization courses and the complementing courses in basic science, engineering, humanities and business. This program has been so far successful in promoting lifelong learning through hands-on experience and emphasizing the importance of logical reasoning and decision-making in design. Moreover, it endorses exposure to knowledge broadness and the acquisition of specialization-specific skills that are needed to for successful practice and to accommodate market needs. The department can proudly claim to have made many contributions over the last 20 years. In the field of specialization, the department faculty have impressive community services research publication records that can be matched by few departments internationally, particularly in the last five years. In teaching, the department is even ahead of other architectural departments as well as other departments of engineering in implementing the hands-on teaching approach and learning by doing. The collegial environment of the department is vitally important for creating an environment inductive for learning. Our graduates are qualified with knowledge and the necessary skills of analysis and design such that they can be employed as in virtually any sector pertaining to architecture and the built environment. In the first year at the college, our students concentrate on learning science and engineering fundamentals with emphasis on applications. In the second and third years, students gain the specialization knowledge and theories in their field as well as develop skills in applying knowledge through design project work and course teamwork. In the fourth year students gain advanced knowledge and starts on their graduation design projects. The two sequenced graduation project courses are our capstone courses in which students are expected to assimilate and integrate the acquired specialization knowledge in one single comprehensive design project. Elective courses offer the students an opportunity to study to greater depth topics that are of particular interest to them.