The Electrical Engineering Department was inaugurated in Assiut University in the late 1950’s of the last century, however the first batch of students graduated in 1964 with specialization in Communications and Electronics, separated from the original main specialization of Power and Machines, Electrical Engineering. Since there are some common courses among the Faculty of Engineering students, a preparatory year courses are delivered to all students joined the faculty. The preparatory year courses was taught to students starting 1957 in the old university buildings in Walediya campus, Assiut until 1959. Then students in the Electrical Engineering Department programs started classes in 1960 in the main Faculty of Engineering building, known today as Mechanical Engineering until mid 80’s of the last century when they started taking classes in the current building full of different labs and facilities since 1985.
The first group of preparatory year students in the whole faculty of Engineering were 50 students in 1959. The first group of students graduating from the Electrical Engineering Department, Communications and Electronics program, were 28 students back in 1964. Then the number of graduates from the same program of EE Dept, increased to an average annual of 40 to 50 students to the end of the last century. Affected by the industry demand, the average number of the annual graduates is about 20 students within the last 20 years.
The program of the EE Department started with an average of four faculty members running all specialized courses, every year, namely Prof Moneer Shaker, Prof Aly Mahmoud, Prof Abdelwahab Ismail and Prof Mohamed Abdel Haleem Ahmed. Then the number of full time faculty members in the program increased to six in 1975 with many of the university own graduates became faculty members such as Dr Abdelkareem Elwardany, Dr Mamdouh Fahmy, Dr Eldeek Elsayed, Dr Hany Seleem, Dr Ibrahim Abdel Fattah and Dr Mohamed Abdel Gawwad. Since then the number of full time faculty member has double or tripled every decade. Thanks to Prof. Mamdouh Fahmy, Most of the information in this section is supplied by him.
The bylaw of the program passed by many changes in 1974, 1985, 1994, 2004 and finally 2021. The change was made to follow up the advancement in the related engineering fields.
Graduate studies for students for Msc and Ph.D degrees have started since mid 1960’s when the department had its first graduates for the Communications and Electronics sector.
The program has been playing an important role in supplying the related industry with qualified engineers. In addition, the graduates and faculty members of Electrical Engineering department programs have the main role in creating the corresponding programs in the relatively newer universities in upper Egypt area such as Minya University, Sohag University, South Valley University and Aswan University.