1992 to 2003 - A Balanced Department
In 1992, Pat Sethna retired and Professor William Garrard became Department Head. Garrard received his BS in Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1967. Despite having never taken a course in aerospace engineering, Garrard had a strong interest in the field and did his Ph.D. thesis on satellite attitude control. Garrard worked with the Honeywell Systems and Research Center in Minneapolis as a consultant and further developed his interests in the application of advanced control theory to control of aerospace vehicles.
During the 1990s, many of the faculty hired in the 1950s and early 1960s retired. Most of these had a theoretical mechanics orientation, and were replaced by faculty members with much more applied interests. Some of the remaining senior faculty members, realizing that national priorities for research favored more practical work, changed the focus of their research. The result was a large increase in funded research in the Department. In fact, the research dollar per faculty member in the AEM Department became one of the highest of all the engineering departments at the University of Minnesota. Research in computational fluid mechanics and hypersonics, experimental fluid mechanics, smart materials, and aerospace systems flourished.
With the end of the cold war and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the demand for aerospace engineers decreased and enrollment in the AEM Department declined. In addition Aerospace Engineering was no longer seen as a glamorous field and was eclipsed by computer science. During the 1990s, state support for higher education also decreased substantially as a percentage of the operating expenses of the University of Minnesota. This resulted in a series of retrenchments and reallocations at the University. The number of faculty members in AEM declined to 16, the same number as the lowest point in the early 1970s. As this is written in February of 2003, the state of Minnesota faces its largest deficit in history. The resolution of this deficit is not clear but its potential effect on the AEM Department and the University of Minnesota is likely to be severe. The survival and success of aerospace engineering at Minnesota, however, stand as evidence to the fact that the department has shown a vital sense of flexibility to change, a characteristic that should carry it well into the future of aerospace engineering.
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Last Modified: 2007-07-24 at 10:10:25 -- this is in International Standard Date and Time Notation