 Although I am writing this in the second week of the quarter, much has already transpired and a full agenda is on our plate for this academic year. September 25th marked the inaugural meeting of the reinvigorated Advisory Committee. The committee is composed of 18 members from as far away as California and Minnesota. The agenda focused on what industry expects of our grads and what we need to do to prepare them for productive careers. Downsizing and outsourcing will surely impact our students. Teaching them business and communication skills will help them sell themselves and their ideas. This will probably require more class and project time - counter to the trend to reduce the time to graduation (see the article on the curriculum). The general feeling of the committee was that we need to teach our students more, not less! The committee suggested one way to give them more knowledge and practical skills was to exchange faculty with engineers from industry. We will be exploring this idea this year. If any of you are interested in spending some exchange time with us, please let us know.
On September 26th, the department held its annual advance. Last year's advance focused on the undergraduate program and led directly to the proposed new curriculum. The goal of this year's advance was to review the graduate/research program. As the university's budget shrinks and the department's faculty continues to shrink (from 32 in 1994 to 29 now) offering high quality undergraduate and graduate programs becomes ever more difficult. Fewer and reorganized courses making use of modern presentation technology is one way to go. This year we will review all of our graduate courses to see if revisions are in order. In contrast to the undergraduate program, whose goals and curriculum are universal to the department, graduate courses are tied very tightly to research interests of the faculty. As faculty retire and new faculty come on board some specialties will be lost, while others emerge. For example, with Jim Chalupnik's retirement, research in noise control is likely to disappear from our palette. On the other hand, Brian Fabien and Steve Shen bring a new emphasis on design and vibrations. Your ideas about the graduate program are always welcome.
This year brought a welcome upturn in admissions. It is not clear what caused the recent decline (102 in autumn quarter '92, 79 in '93, 95 in '94, 104 in '95) but the strong job market for mechanical engineers is gratifying. Trends suggest we will return to our historic enrollment highs of over 400 in a few years. With the increased student interest in the freshmen course ENGR 100 Introduction to Design, more students will be exposed to mechanical engineering topics. When we implement sophomore admissions, I am confident that an ever increasing number of students will be attracted to the department.
I would like to thank Jim Chalupnik for his years of service as associate chairman and welcome Bruce Adee as his successor. Bruce's primary responsibilities are scheduling courses and instructors and overseeing the operations of the shops. Bruce has already found out what Jim carefully forgot to tell him: neither of the tasks is easy and both provide many opportunities to question one's sanity. Jim has agreed to stay on for autumn quarter and supervise the ABET accreditation. Every seven years we must be reviewed by a national committee to ensure that we meet the basic standards set down by ASME and other professional societies. The committee visits us for two days and we provide them with examples of all the work done in every class.
Let me end by inviting all of you to give us your ideas and comments and welcome you to stop by the department anytime you can. We would like you to see the labs that are being renovated and the new courses being offered and have an opportunity to visit with your old profs.
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