It is, for example, a leader in sustaining a resource that SEAS has recently made a priority: lab space.

“MIT lab space is fantastic,” says Rashid M. Yasin ’12, an engineering concentrator. “I took a course there last spring that had its own lab space ... almost wholly devoted to that one class.”

Nevius, the undergraduate president of the HCES, says that lab space at Harvard is often cramped. Pierce G12, a laboratory in the basement of Pierce Hall, was at one point housing nine senior thesis projects, one NASA competition project, and one hydrokinetic turbine project, he explains. “You could barely walk down in that space.”

Church, the affiliate of HST, also says that MIT can capitalize on its established position in the field of engineering to draw funding from spin-off companies and industry leaders alike.

But some faculty members at Harvard say that the University’s cross-disciplinary resources are an asset for SEAS.

Harvard Medical School Associate Professor Ali Khademhosseini, who is also affiliated with HST, says that SEAS can develop a “synergistic” relationship with other components of the University.

“Potentially engineering at Harvard already is bigger and more competitive than it appears,” he says. “It simply could be how we could present it.”

—Staff writer Amy Guan can be reached at guan@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.