Chairman's Corner

During the past year, several readers remarked on the discouraging tone of my last Chairman's Corner. I was pleased to find out that my column is read and I am also pleased to be much more upbeat this year. After a great deal of turmoil, most of the troubling issues which were on our plate last year have been resolved in a positive way. The Legislature and Governor were much more supportive of the University this year, the tenure dispute has been resolved, we have a new President and a reconstituted Board of Regents, and there seems to be a feeling of cautious optimism among the members of the University community. External research funding for the Department continues to increase and our research expenditures per faculty member jumped from $125,130 in 1994-95 to $183,656 in 1995-96 the most recent year we have data for. This places us second, behind Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, in all of the Engineering Departments. This a real contrast to 1991-92 when our expenditures were $63,029 per faculty member and we were lowest of the Engineering Departments. Although the number of students majoring in AEM has declined, we teach statics, dynamics, and deformable body mechanics as service courses to most engineering majors and of the five engineering departments we are third - ahead of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering - in student credit hours taught per faculty member. Our number of majors seems to have stabilized or even increased slightly. The job market is booming and with the successful mission to Mars, interest in aerospace appears to be increasing.

Our faculty members continue to receive honors and awards. This year Professor Tayfun Tezduyar was named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor. Only six of these awards were given to University of Minnesota faculty members. The McKnight Professorships are funded by the McKnight Foundation and the Permanent University Fund and are designed to "honor the University's finest mid-career faculty scholars." Tayfun is a leading figure in flow simulation and modeling and is Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center headquartered at the University. Professor Amy Alving was named a White House Fellow. The White House Fellow program was established by President Lyndon Johnson with the intent of drawing individuals of exceptionally high promise to Washington for one year of personal involvement in the process of government. Fellows typically work directly for top Executive Branch Officials filling a special assistant role. Amy will be working with the Deputy Secretary (designate) of the Commerce Department. Each year there are about 1,000 applicants for only 11 to 19 fellowships. Although not a member of our faculty, we were happy to learn that Ted Davis, Dean of IT, was named Regents Professor, the highest academic rank at the University of Minnesota. Former IT Dean and Senior Vice President Jim Infante will be joining Vanderbilt University as Dean of Arts and Sciences.

We will be converting from quarters to semesters in 1999 and this year we had to redesign our curriculum. This required a great deal of work by all of the faculty, but we are especially grateful to Dr. Tom Shield for overseeing this major project. The details of our new program are given in this Newsletter. It is no secret that Engineering is becoming more global and this is also true of our Department. We now have many more exchange programs, research collaborations, and visiting scholars than ever before and some of these activities are described later.

State support for the infrastucture of the Department - equipment, maintenance, and supplies - is still not adequate and we depend on gifts as an important way of supplementing state funds. This year we were very fortunate to receive a number of gifts from our alumni and friends including a large donation from Dick DeLeo and his wife Shirley. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters. Your support is much appreciated by all of us. One of our goals to keep in closer contact with our graduates. Please keep in touch by providing us with items for our Alumni News. You can do that by sending e-mail to Donna Rosenthal, or by fax at (612) 626-1558. And thank you for visiting our site here on the world wide web.