From the Dean

This is a great time for the School of Engineering.

Featheringill Hall opened for classes in January. This beautiful, state-of-the-art facility with excellent classroom, office and laboratory spaces, has quickly won the praise of our students and faculty and our alumni. This new building is a very visible sign of our School’s progress, and has served to raise the profile of the School of Engineering on the Vanderbilt campus

The School of Engineering faculty continues to experience wonderful success with their research efforts. The School’s externally funded research program has essentially doubled in the last five years. Additionally, Engineering faculty are key participants in new Vanderbilt trans-institutional initiatives focusing on nano-science and engineering, biophysical sciences and bioengineering, and environmental risk and resource management. This past summer, the School was awarded a unique National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded graduate training program under their Integrative Graduate Education, Research and Training (IGERT) initiative to study and develop multidisciplinary approaches to assessing and managing risk and reliability. Strong, successful efforts continue in semiconductor radiation effects (U.S. Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) and bioengineering education (NSF Engineering Research Center).

In December, the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) hosted a national workshop to develop a roadmap for federally-funded computer software research. This NSF sponsored workshop included some of the top computer researchers and most influential government agency representatives to examine ways to dramatically increase software productivity and interoperability without compromising quality.

Two more of our terrific young faculty members won NSF CAREER Awards in the last year. Bridget Rogers, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Ken Frampton, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, won this prestigious national award that recognizes and supports the teaching and research objectives of exceptional junior faculty members. This makes five CAREER awards for School of Engineering faculty in the past two years. And we are very optimistic about our chances for future such awards.

And undergraduate students? This year’s freshman class, comprised of 251 men and 92 women, has an average SAT score of 1320. These are terrific, very capable students. With the addition of new funds to enable us to offer additional honor scholarships and minimize student loans, we expect next year’s class to be even stronger. Thanks in part to improved financial aid capability, our new building, better classroom facilities and new technology resources, we expect 2002 to be an excellent year for student recruiting.

Next year, incoming freshman will be part of the first School wireless/wired network program. TransIT will equip freshmen engineering students with state-of-the-art laptops with wired and wireless access to the engineering community and the Internet. This mobile-access computing system will be used in the classroom for teamwork and student-faculty interaction and access to sophisticated computer environments and tools.

Exciting research, exemplary faculty, great students, and a terrific new building — these are strong forces aiding our School’s progress. We’re in a better position than ever to recruit top undergraduates, strong graduate students and excellent faculty to Vanderbilt … in spite of the intense nationwide competition for this talent.

This is a great time for the School of Engineering. We intend to continue to focus on our commitments to upgrade facilities, to provide an exceptional undergraduate engineering education, to expand our research programs, to strengthen our graduate programs, and to make a significant contribution to the nation in solving problems that require the expertise and effort of highly educated engineers.