Chairman's Corner

This was our first year under the new semester system. Because of hard work by a lot of people, things went remarkably smooth and there were no problems of any real consequence. In the fall of 2001, we will be visited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) as part of our six year accreditation cycle. ABET is chartered by the U. S. Department of Education to accredit all engineering programs in the United States. ABET has dramatically changed its procedures for accreditation since the last visit to the University of Minnesota in 1995. The accreditation process is now oriented toward continuous quality improvement. Briefly, based on our mission, we formulate educational objectives, educational outcomes and procedures for assessing whether we are achieving these objectives and outcomes. We use the results of our assessment procedures to guide us in making improvements in our program. All of this is done in consultation with our constituents. For more details please see the ABET web site at http://www.abet.org. 

Our mission, objectives, desired outcomes and constituents are given in this edition of the AEM Update. These were developed with inputs from faculty, students, alumni, and employers. More information is given in our web site at /teaching/. Please give us your comments. If you have not visited our web site recently please do as it is completely new and is a real improvement over the old site. 

One of our assessment tools that you may be interested in is a survey of our alumni. Many of you participated in this survey last year and the results are given in this issue of the Update. For the most part, our program received high marks from our alumni; however, it appears that we need to do some work on our advising and intern programs. Alumni also indicated some dissatisfaction with the their education in the areas of propulsion and orbital mechanics. We have tried to remedy these problems by teaching propulsion in the Department rather than having our students take it from mechanical engineering and by requiring a course in spaceflight dynamics for graduation. We are also working on improving our labs and computational facilities (these are areas in which gifts from friends and alumni can make a huge difference). Alumni were also not happy with their liberal arts experience here at the University of Minnesota. 

There have been several changes in the faculty this year. Tom Lundgren retired this year after 40 years as a faculty member. Tom will continue as Professor Emeritus. We added two new faculty members in fluid mechanics who will join us this year. They are Dr. Ashley James, who comes from Georgia Tech, and Dr. Krishnan Mahesh from Stanford. With retirements and the addition of new faculty members, the AEM Department has the lowest average age of any Department in the Institute of Technology. This year we will be searching for a new faculty member in the aerospace systems area. 

We continue to make improvements in Akerman Hall. This year we are upgrading the electrical service in the building and are having chilled water for air conditioning and process cooling run into the building. It will be some time before the building has central air conditioning, but the first step has been made. In addition, we are building a new aerospace systems lab in the basement of Akerman and are substantially upgrading our seminar room. We have been able to accomplish these upgrades with help from the University, research grants, and gifts from friends and alumni. There is still a lot of work to do on Akerman Hall to bring it up to modern standards. 

Research activity in the Department continues to be strong and this results in demands for quality space for labs. Unfortunately space is extremely limited. The University has started a new program in Biomedical Engineering which has priority for new space and we are forced to work with what space we have in Akerman and Shepherd Labs. The space in Akerman in particular often needs substantial upgrades in infrastructure. While we receive some help from the University, we have to pay for many of these upgrades out of departmental funds and gifts supporting these improvements as well as improvements in our laboratory and computational equipment are essential. 

One exciting project some of our students will be participating in next year is the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program sponsored by NASA and the Texas Space Grant Consortium. This is a program where students propose and perform research projects on board the NASA KC-135 aircraft that is used to produce microgravity conditions for short periods of time. The flight path of this aircraft provides a roller coaster ride and it is nick-named “The Vomit Comet.” Two student proposals were accepted from our Department and we hope to have pictures next year. 

We want to keep in touch with our graduates, so please send us items for our Alumni News. This can be accomplished by contacting Donna Rosenthal at donna@aem.umn.edu or by fax at (612) 625-1558. I want to thank all of you for providing support for our Department. Your support is critical to us in making the improvements that are required to maintain excellence in our programs. 
--Dr. William Garrard

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