Yale’s Faculty of Engineering will be spun off to create the University’s 13th professional school, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University announced Monday.

The Yale Corporation approved the creation of the school at its meeting over the weekend. The dean of Engineering, T. Kyle Vanderlick, will take the helm of the new school, whose faculty will be increased in size by nearly 20 percent, the University said.

“Re-establishing the School of Engineering & Applied Science is the next step in a 14-year effort to strengthen engineering at Yale and is part of our broader strategy of enhancing Yale’s excellence in science and technology,” University President Richard Levin said in a statement Monday. “This will raise the visibility and preeminence of the field, at a time of great promise for engineering’s contribution to solving problems to improve health, prosperity and the environment.”

The University is also in the early stages of planning a significant new engineering building to be erected on Hillhouse Avenue on the current site of University Health Services.

Beyond the new building, Yale will also add 11 new professors to the Faculty of Engineering’s existing 59-person faculty, the University said in its announcement.

“The establishment of SEAS will ensure strategic growth and enhanced research and educational opportunities in engineering, including the creation of bridges to other Schools at Yale,” Vanderlick said in a statement. “It will also cement the integral role of engineering in a complete liberal arts education.”

The University first began offering engineering courses in the 1850s, and in 1932 it created a School of Engineering. But in the 1960s, the University’s engineering departments were unified as part of a single Department of Engineering within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and since then have been spun off as individual departments.

Levin, who was away in Washington, D.C., on University business Monday, could not immediately be reached for comment.