Newsletter Archives; Winter 2001

William R.D. Wilson Professor and Department Chair

Chair's Corner

Welcome to the Winter 2001 edition of the Department of Mechanical Engineering Newsletter. As befits the millenium, 2000 has been a year of major transitions for the Department. We have seen many of the ideas from our strategic planning process take root and start to develop. We are also in the process of restructuring our staff to better support our plans and to improve the level of service that we provide to all our customers.

The year has also seen many changes in our personnel. Our faculty search concluded very successfully with the hiring of three exceptional new faculty members. Santosh Devasia has joined us as Associate Professor. His expertise lies in the area of controls and mechatronics. He has been particularly successful in applying elegant control theory to practical problems. He will be a great asset to our excellent group in Systems and Dynamics.

Paul Labossiere and Wei (Wayne) Li both joined the Mechanics, Materials and Manufacturing group as Assistant Professors. Paul is expert in the area of deformation and failure, particularly applied to micro-electronic devices. Wayne works on manufacturing and is a leader in the new field of information discovery in manufacturing. We also welcome Eric Seibel to the Department as Research Assistant Professor and congratulate Mark Ganter on his promotion to full Professor.

Professor Jens Jorgensen will retire at the end of the current academic year. Jens has made many important contributions to the Department, particularly in the areas of manufacturing and design. He has been the main driving force for the creation of the Integrated Learning Factory which continues to flourish under the leadership of Professor John Kramlich. He will continue to work part-time for the Department in liaison with industry in support of our "capstone" design project courses.

In September Dina Meske, who was our Academic Counselor for many years, left to take up a new position at the Bothell Campus. Dina was a major resource for our students and played an important role in creating the "family" atmosphere so characteristic of the Department. We wish her all success in her new job. Carol Starovasnik retired last month from the Graduate Advising office. We will miss her cheery demeanor around the office and hope that she will enjoy her expanded leisure time.

Part of our staff reorganization includes combining undergraduate and graduate admissions and advising and functions in a new office of Student Services. This will also have expanded roles that will include supporting relations with K-14 schools, employers and alumni. We welcome a new Academic Counselor, Margo Segimoto, to head up this new office. A search is in progress for an additional staff member.

Our program to improve the physical facilities for the Department continues unabated. New labs have been finished for professors Cooper, Devasia and Ganter to support research and teaching in the areas of design for environment, ultra-precision control, and computational design and manufacturing respectively. A new lab for professor Labossiere is essentially complete and a new lab for professor Li is in the planning stage. Further expansion and improvement of our labs in the manufacturing area will be facilitated by the generous gift from the Solheim family that is described in our cover story.

We also continue to work with the university to improve the facilities for teaching. A major program is underway to upgrade all the classrooms in the Mechanical Engineering Building. The Department is contributing some space to allow the enlargement of classrooms and the installation of more flexible seating arrangements which better suit the new "active" and "group" learning experiences which we are providing to our students. We also have nearly completed the replacement of all the computers in our instructional labs and major upgrades of the machine tools in the instructional shop. The latter was made possible by a generous donation from Boeing.

During the year the Department faculty have racked up an impressive number of honors and awards. These are summarized on page 8. However, I must single out the award of the Ralph Coats Roe Medal to Professor Barry Hyman for his work on creating a better understanding of the engineer's worth to society. This is an award of the very highest level from ASME and we are all proud that it should come to Barry

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, the Department is fast approaching its Centenary. The exact date is open to some interpretation. The first ME classes were held in 1902, the first ME professor (John Thorpe) was appointed in 1903, the first head of ME (Everett Eastwood) was appointed in 1905 and the first students were graduated in 1906. In any event, we hope to make the Centenary an occasion for celebration and a time to raise some funds to ensure the ongoing success of the Department. To this end we shortly will form a committee to help plan the centennial program. I welcome your ideas on this.

In conclusion, I want to thank all those who have supported the Department and its activities in the past year. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to work with an exceptional team of faculty and staff and for an exceptional group of students. I also greatly appreciate the help of our many friends in industry and the alumni community. I will continue to rely on you all to move the Department to a higher level of excellence.