much of usu's most widespread academic renown stems directly from the college of engineering. usu houses the space dynamics laboratory (sdl) which is a research facility focusing on military and science applications. the sdl frequently submits projects to the department of defense and nasa. according to recent national science foundation statistics, usu ranked first among all universities in the u.s. in funding for aerospace research. usu has also won multiple national aerospace engineering competitions in the past, including two in the 2008–09 academic year alone.