Engineering education, at the tertiary level, began in Malaysia in 1956 with the establishment of the Engineering Department at University of Malaya's Bukit Timah campus in Singapore. Only a Bachelor degree course in Civil Engineering was offered then. The department was upgraded to a faculty when University of Malaya relocated to its campus in Lembah Pantai in 1958. In the same year, the second bachelor degree course in Mechanical Engineering was introduced. A year later, a Bachelor Degree course in Electrical Engineering was added to the number of courses available to undergraduates. In 1970, the Faculty introduced the fourth course, a bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering. All four courses were turned into respective departments in 1974. In the 1996/97 session, the Faculty introduced six other courses namely in Telecommunication Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Materials Engineering, Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.

To-date, the Faculty has six departments i.e the Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, the Department of Engineering Design & Manufacture and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The Faculty now offers 12 courses, with the latest addition of the Bachelor of Biomedical Engineering (Prosthetics and Orthotics), which was introduced in the 2009/2010 session. All engineering courses, offered by University of Malaya, have been accreditated by the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC), the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (BEM) in order for all undergraduate engineering students to register with them, upon graduation. All programmes have been structured such, that they meet the nation and the stakeholder's vision of producing responsible, multi-talented and highly qualified engineers of excellent leadership quality. This is evident from the Programme Outcome and Programme Educational Objectives mapped out for each course, offered.

In line with the global tertiary education scenario, efforts are in place to drive the Faculty towards excellence and to ensure that the human capital produced by the university meets current needs. Towards this direction, the Faculty has adopted the National Tertiary Education Strategic Plan and inputs from various stakeholder programmes as the basis, to improve the quality, competitiveness and creativity of each course offered. As a preliminary step to ensure that all courses offered, are relevant to market needs, the faculty is reviewing the overall curriculum in order to produce engineering graduates of high calibre.

Internationalisation is also the Faculty of Engineering's agenda and part of the thrust of the National Tertiary Education Strategic Plan. Beginning with the 2007/08 session, international students were also recruited to pursue engineering courses at the Faculty. With the presence of international students, alongside Malaysian students, it's the Faculty's aspiration to make the students adopt a more global and open-minded approach in order to enhance their overall level of competitiveness. We hope all undergraduates will be able to successfully complete their courses and be able to secure successful careers, upon graduation.