Chairman's Corner

This has been a year of comings and going for the Department and the University. In the Department, Ted Wilson retired in June after 38 years of service as a member of our faculty. Ted will remain as Professor Emeritus and continue his distinguished research program in biomechanics of the lung. Mehran Mesbahi left us to join the faculty at the University of Washington. We wish Mehran well. Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher will join us this fall from Stanford where he is completing a Post Doc in the GPS Laboratory. Demoz works in sensor systems for navigation, guidance and control for aerospace vehicles. He was an Officer in the U. S. Navy, is a pilot, and has a strong aerospace orientation. We look forward to his arrival this fall. We have two faculty searches going this year, one in Aerospace Systems and one in Solid Mechanics and Structures.

I am sure that most of you know that President Mark Yudoff left us this summer to re-join the University of Texas System as President. As an alum of the UT System, I am pleased to see them acquire a strong leader; however, having spent my career at Minnesota, I was very sorry to see President Yudoff leave. He provided us with strong, innovative leadership. Due to President Yudoff, we are undergoing the largest building program in the history of the University and faculty and student morale is as good as I have ever seen it. I believe that President Yudoff did much to strengthen the image of the University, particularly in Minnesota. In visiting many other Universities, including the big name schools, I am impressed with how well our programs compare with those acknowledged as the very best. I am always surprised that within Minnesota itself the quality of the U seems to not be appreciated at times. We need another strong President who will provide creative leadership and who will enhance the prestige of the U both in the state and nationally.

As an example of the strength of the U and the Department, Professor Ivan Marusic was one of 25 individuals who received one of the prestigious Packard Faculty Fellowships in Science and Engineering. The Packard Award will support Ivan’s research in turbulence. This is an extremely competitive program as only 50 of the most outstanding Universities in the United States are allowed to compete. Each University is allowed two nominees. The competition within the U to be a nominee is fierce and the selection process among the 100 nominees is rigorous. This year both the nominees from the U were awarded Fellowships. This is very rare. Faculty members from our Department have received two Packard Faculty Fellowships. I am not sure if any other Department at the U has received more than one. Given the small size of our faculty this is very good indeed. In addition, Professor Krishnan Mahesh received a NSF CAREER Award to support his program of teaching and research in computational fluid mechanics. Mahesh’s research has great promise for simulating flows in complex configurations such as those encountered in jet engines. The CAREER Awards are very prestigious awards for junior faculty and are very competitive.

This spring, one of our graduates, Lt. Col. Duane Carey, piloted the Space Shuttle Columbia on its successful mission to service and improve the Hubble telescope. Duane was my Masters advisee 20 years ago and I was very proud of him. Both astronauts who graduated from the University of Minnesota, Duane and the late Deke Slayton, were graduates of our Department. Duane will give a talk here this fall and you are encouraged to attend. Details are given in this copy of the Update. The other pilot, Scott Altman, was a student in the Parachute Systems short course that I organized and co-taught in fall of 1998, so I felt a very personal connection with this particular mission.

Another exciting event this year was the participation of two more student groups from the Department in the NASA reduced gravity program. This program gives students a chance to perform an experiment in zero gravity on board a NASA KC-135 aircraft. This is the second year students from the AEM Department have participated in this program and groups have already been formed for this coming academic year.

The job market was not red hot for our graduates this year; however, most were able to find professional employment. We had a total of 32 graduates in academic 2001-02. Fourteen are attending graduate school, one is an officer in the U.S. Air Force, seven joined aerospace companies, and two went to engineering firms outside the aerospace field. Of the remaining ten, four took jobs outside the engineering field and we do not have information as to where the other six are employed.

As part of our continuous quality improvement evaluation processes, we made two changes in our program. First, we changed our system of upper division advising. Previously, each faculty member had been assigned undergraduate advisees; however, students believed that some faculty were more knowledgeable about our program and more interested in advising undergraduates than others. We identified the subset of our faculty who are our best advisors and now they will be doing all of the undergraduate advising. The faculty doing the advising will receive a reduction in some of their other assigned duties. We also added more comprehensive treatment of ethics to several of our courses.

As mentioned in the last Update, we were visited by ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) as part of the regular evaluation and accreditation cycle. The faculty and staff worked hard to prepare for the visit and we were re-accredited. The Department has been continuously accredited since 1936. As part of our process for evaluating how well we achieve our educational objectives and outcomes, I have written a short section on our objectives in this Update. I would appreciate hearing your comments on how well you think we are achieving these.

Although the University managed for the most part to dodge the bullet during the spring legislative session, tuition was increased by almost sixteen percent. The Department suffered a small budget reduction, but I am much more concerned about the future. The State is facing a large budget deficit that is ominous for future higher education funding. The State does not provide funding for scholarships and student projects such as the reduced gravity experiments. We depend on support from our alums and friends for these programs and we hope that you will consider giving to one of our many funds.

--Bill Garrard
Professor and Head

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