In This Issue . . .
1997 Annual Meeting in Orlando
Mark Your Calendar and Make Your Reservations
NEEDHA Appointments and Awards
NEEDHA'96 Meeting in San Diego
'96 Workshops
NEEDHA Award Nominations are Solicited
Note from the President
Board of Directors
Committee on ABET Criteria 2000 Formed
ASEE Meeting
Scenes from San Diego
NEEDHA Web Site
Future Meeting Sites
NEEDHA will hold its thirteenth annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, Friday, March 14, through Tuesday, March 18, 1997. The meeting site will be the Hyatt Orlando, located at the main entrance to Disney World. As Disney has been reminding us in their advertising, this is the 25th anniversary of Walt Disney World in Florida, and it will be a great opportunity to bring the family to the NEEDHA Annual Meeting! The major topics for this year's meeting have been selected in response to department heads' input regarding information that they need to be successful in leading EE departments. NEEDHA Vice President Bill Brown is the conference organizer.
Two workshops are planned for Friday. An all-day ABET Evaluator workshop will be conducted by IEEE. This event has been a popular addition to the NEEDHA schedule. The workshop is designed specifically to train new ABET evaluators, but is open to all interested persons. It is most helpful in preparing for an accreditation visit. Separate registration is required for this workshop. In the afternoon on Friday, a workshop for new department heads will be held, passing on much wisdom and advice, some of which has no doubt been learned the hard way by the presenters! Registration for the NEEDHA meeting will be held Friday afternoon and evening, and a welcome reception will kick off the meeting that evening.
Saturday morning will be devoted to two topics: Industry Relations, and the Engineering Workplace, Now and in the Future. A series of parallel sessions is planned for Saturday afternoon, including: Department Funding and Entrepreneurship, the Role of Engineering in Liberal Education, Management Techniques, Downsizing the Curriculum, Labs in the Curriculum, Faculty Evaluation, and Intellectual Policies.
Sunday will be free for the theme parks or other personal activities, with the Awards Banquet in the evening.
The conference reconvenes on Monday with the morning devoted to the new ABET accreditation criteria titled "Criteria 2000." These criteria are based on outcome assessment, and represent a radical departure from the present prescriptive requirements. The conference will hear from representatives of the two schools visited in the 1996-97 academic year under the new criteria as "beta test sites." Also, the process of outcomes assessment will be introduced, with examples from current practice. Finally on Monday morning, Bob White will report for the recently-formed NEEDHA committee on ABET Criteria 2000. On Monday afternoon the topics will include research funding, with several breakout sessions planned.
The business meeting will begin the day on Tuesday. One new item of business is expected to be a proposal for an amendment to the constitution to facilitate greater involvement of international EE department heads. Tim Trick is pursuing this item, and would be interested in member input on the internationalization of NEEDHA. The meeting concludes with the ever-popular Open Forum.
The 1997 meeting will adjourn at noon, with box lunches to sustain members on the trips home.
NEEDHA Annual Meeting -- March 14-18, 1997
Hyatt Orlando, Orlando, Florida
To register call the NEEDHA Office (312)-559-3724
Or use the registration form on the web at
http://www.needha.org
For hotel reservations contact the Orlando Hyatt at (407) 396-1234
Identify yourself as a NEEDHA attendee to receive discounted room rate.
Hotel accommodations fill up weeks in advance ...
make your arrangements today!
The NEEDHA Presidential gavel has passed from Sherra Kerns to Paul Penfield, Jr. Paul organized last year's meeting in San Diego, and was responsible for developing NEEDHA's very successful Web site. Paul is Head of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT. He received his B.A. degree in Physics from Amherst College, and the Sc.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT. He has been on the MIT faculty since 1960, serving as EECS department head since 1989.
His technical interests have included solid-state microwave devices and circuits, noise and thermodynamics, electrodynamics of moving media, circuit theory, computer-aided design, APL language extensions, integrated-circuit design automation, and computer-aided fabrication of integrated circuits. Paul is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and former Chairman of the Boston Section. He received the IEEE Darlington Award in 1983 and the Centennial Medal in 1984. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Larry Burton of Pennsylvania State University has been elected as Secretary/Treasurer of NEEDHA. This position progresses to Vice President and then President in successive years. Larry has previously been active in NEEDHA, in particular as Chair of the Awards Committee. He is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Larry received BS and MS degrees in physics from Temple University in 1962 and 1966, and a Ph.D. in physics from Penn State in 1970. After industrial experience at Ford Motor Co. and Leeds & Northrup, he entered academia as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas Tech University. In 1973 he joined the University of Delaware's Institute of Energy Conversion. He joined the Electrical Engineering faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1977, and assumed his present position at Penn State in 1990. Larry's research interests lie in the areas of compound semiconductors, photovoltaics, thin films, ferroelectric devices, ion damage in GaAs, and degradation mechanisms. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology.
Keith Carver and Bruce Eisenstein were announced as recipients of the 1996 NEEDHA Outstanding Service Awards at the Awards Banquet in San Diego. Bob Janowiak was also announced as the recipient of the NEEDHA Special Service Award.
Keith Carver (center) accepts the outstanding service award
from Larry Burton and Sherra Kerns.
Among Keith Carver's many contributions to NEEDHA are his service on the board from 1989-1994, as president in 1991-92, his compilation and publication in 1992 of NEEDHA's history, and his skillful construction of the President's gavel. Keith received the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering in 1967 from The Ohio State University. He has served on the faculties of the University of Kentucky and New Mexico State University. Keith joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1984, as Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He served as Head from 1984 - 1991 and from 1993-1994; during the period 1991-1992, he was Acting Dean of Engineering. Keith's research interests and publications have been primarily in the fields of terrestrial microwave remote sensing systems and instrumentation. Keith is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has received the NASA Public Service Award, the IEEE Centennial Medal, and the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Outstanding Service Award.
Bruce Eisenstein (center) receives the outstanding service award.
Bruce Eisenstein has been a major force in NEEDHA since the organization's founding. Perhaps Bruce's best-known efforts have been his stimulating and entertaining workshops on "How to be a Department Head." Bruce served as NEEDHA President in 1985-1986, and as a Board member from 1983 to 1988. Bruce is the Arthur J. Rowland Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel University. He received his BS in EE from MIT, his MS from Drexel, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the Drexel faculty he was a Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. Bruce is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has received many honors, including the IEEE Education Society Achievement Award and the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineering Educator Award. Bruce has served on the IEEE Executive Committee and as Secretary/Treasurer and President of the IEEE Education Society.
Bob Janowiak was recognized with a special service award.
As Executive Director and Assistant Treasurer of NEEDHA, Robert M. Janowiak has contributed greatly to the organization's success since the time of NEEDHA's original association with the International Engineering Consortium. Besides assuring that NEEDHA's books balance, Bob has helped guide NEEDHA in new directions, particularly with respect to the globalization of electrical engineering. Bob began his career with the IIT Research Institute. He served as vice president of marketing and vice president-general manager of the Information Products Division in Rockwell International's Graphics Group, and as president of Federal Signal Corporation's Signal Group. As Executive Director of the International Engineering Consortium, Bob is involved in a wide range of university and educational programs. Bob is also adjunct professor of marketing and business policy at the Harold Stuart School of Business Administration, Illinois Institute of Technology. He serves on the boards of directors of a large number of corporations, foundations, and universities. Bob holds the BSEE from the University of Illinois, MSEE from Illinois Institute of Technology, and MBA from the University of Chicago.
At least for those of us in the snow belt, NEEDHA's Annual Meeting in the sun belt would be welcome even if it didn't contain several days of stimulating information, conversation, and education. The San Diego get-together was up to the challenge on all counts, with 158 attendees, a wide-ranging program, and great weather.
Early arrivals participated in the IEEE/ABET Program Evaluator Training Workshop on Friday, March 22. This popular program attracted a full house of participants. Later on Friday, Larry Burton and John Proakis held a workshop for new EE Chairs.
Saturday began with Sherra Kerns' welcome, followed by four viewpoints on the use of the Internet and World Wide Web for education. This session was chaired by Paul Penfield Jr. of MIT. Daniel Huttenlocher from Cornell described a system to allow students and faculty to jointly participate in on-line text-based "conversations" on course topics in an organized fashion. Mark Yoder of Rose Hulman described a first course in EE that is based on DSP principles rather than traditional circuits, and that is partly delivered via the web. Gregory Hidley of UCSD described the campus infrastructure and organization that is necessary to provide internet service. Finally, Burkes Oakley of the University of Illinois described the current implementation of an "Asynchronous Learning Network" which provides 24-hour access to course materials, tutorials, and quizzes (with immediate, automatic grading).
Saturday afternoon began with a session devoted to first-year courses, chaired by Roger Webb of Georgia Tech. Martin Roden of California State University, Los Angeles, described an "Introduction to Engineering" course that is intended to develop behavior and attitudes rather than instill technical knowledge. The desired outcomes include community building, professional awareness, academic success, personal development, and college orientation. Tim Trick of the University of Illinois presented his course, "Introduction to EE," which includes substantial laboratory components. Over the semester the students design, construct, and test an autonomous model vehicle. Russel Callen Jr. of Georgia Tech described a course, "EE in American Society," in the SUCCEED Coalition that combines EE with Humanities. Topics range from the rise of electric power to race and gender issues. Gretchen Kalonji of the University of Washington summarized experience in the ECSEL Coalition with first-year design activities. Substantial evaluation over the five-year period has been conducted, with results indicating positive effects on student retention. Finally, Jeffrey Froyd of Rose-Hulman described their experience with the Integrated First Year Curriculum in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. The intention is to build connections among math, science, and engineering, and themes across technical areas. The session ended with a panel discussion among all the presenters. The difficulty in convincing many faculty to try new, "active learning" approaches was mentioned. Saturday afternoon continued with presentations on "Bold Experiments" in EE education, chaired by Tim Trick. Bob White of Carnegie Mellon described their new EE curriculum which radically reshapes courses and eliminates most required courses. Students take only four courses per semester, and the program contains only four required courses. Nihat Bilgutay of Drexel provided an overview of Drexel's substantial experience with their "Enhanced Educational Experiences for Engineers" (E4) program which has been in operation since 1988. In this program engineering is introduced in the first year, and is integrated with math and science. Many results have been positive, but the administrative and organizational complexity is increased. Steve Kang of the University of Illinois described their experience in streamlining and modernizing the EE curriculum, and adding flexibility in areas such as international studies. Bede Liu of Princeton University described a new curriculum based on four core courses (in signals and systems, circuits, logic, and microelectronics) with a smaller tree of prerequisites than in the past. He stated a need for more unstructured, independent work, and industrial exposure. Anthony Sebald of the University of California, San Diego, described their efforts to return to a true four-year program with solid education in humanities and social sciences as well as math, science, and engineering, and to remove the long strings of prerequisites. The panel discussion which followed echoed the previous panel in stating the difficulties in persuading faculty to adopt new teaching styles to match the curricular changes.
On Sunday many attendees relaxed and saw the sights, but a good number traveled to UCSD to build web pages (see the story on the Workshops). In the evening everyone reconvened for the Awards Banquet. In addition to the awards (described in a separate story) the group was enlightened and entertained with an after-dinner speech by David Conner. With very little compression, Dave's speech was, "Be brave; be bold, be brief; be seated." The applause was most enthusiastic.
Dave Conner presents a brave, bold and brief after-dinner speech.
Monday began with an update on ABET accreditation activities with Dick Seagrave of the Chemical Engineering Department at Iowa State, incoming Chair of the Engineering Accreditation Commission. Dick organized his talk on the "Past, Present, and Future." He began with a brief history of the ABET criteria which have grown from four pages in 1977 to 28 pages today, and are perceived as inflexible and stifling to educational innovation. At present the accreditation process is being redesigned to improve communication, reduce the adversarial nature, and focus on program improvement. In the future, Criteria 2000 will radically change the accreditation criteria and approach.Joseph Bordogna of the National Science Foundation provided a forward-looking view of the NSF Engineering Directorate and of engineering education. He sees a future focus on Knowledge, Productivity, and Innovation by the NSF, and a move in education from the "teaching, research, service" paradigm to one of "creation, integration, and transfer of knowledge." NSF goals include (1) World leadership in all aspects of science, math, and engineering, (2) Promotion of the discovery, dissemination, and use of new knowledge, and (3) Enhancement of K-PhD education. Dr. Bordogna concluded his remarks by commenting on the need for more political activity by academics, including the need to keep local politicians informed on the value of engineering education and research.
Monday afternoon was devoted to the internationalization of engineering education, chaired by David Messerschmitt of the University of California, Berkeley. Murat Kunt of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology described the European situation as somewhat fragmented. He mentioned ERASMUS (European Action Schemes for Mobility of University Students) as a successful program for giving European students experience in other countries. Aparajita Mazumder of the University of Illinois described the operation of the large international program there. Francois Malassenet of the Georgia Tech Lorraine (France) campus described the origin and operation of this unique enterprise. This is a residential program that serves both French and international (including U.S.) students. Nathan Milbee of Advanced Micro Devices described his experience in an intensive, short-term (10 week) study program in Japan.
On Tuesday morning the NEEDHA business meeting was held. Items of business included the financial report (healthy), possible revisions to the Annual Survey, consideration of NEEDHA becoming more international, presentations by the two candidates for Secretary/Treasurer (Larry Burton and Mostafa Kaveh), and the passing of the gavel from Sherra Kerns to Paul Penfield. The meeting concluded with a lively open forum discussion that covered topics ranging from the new accreditation criteria to faculty raise pools.
Sherra Kerns passes the gavel to Paul Penfield, Jr.
Nihat Bilgutay (Drexel)
The WWW Workshop was run by Paul Penfield, Jr. of MIT with the assistance of several UCSD graduate students. The workshop was held at a University of California-San Diego engineering laboratory equipped with Macintosh computers. There were approximately 15 attendees. It was such a sunny and beautiful day outside that many wondered as the workshop began whether this was indeed the best way to spend the afternoon in San Diego! In fact, some thought we might be able to complete the workshop earlier than planned and catch some sunshine. However, once Paul started to lecture, everyone was completely captivated by the power and simplicity of creating a home page. Paul went through every instruction carefully and in a methodical fashion, while answering questions very patiently. We were quite impressed with Paul's ability as a lecturer, and how quickly he was able to teach us all the necessary steps for developing our home pages. Many of us had our pictures taken on-site using the digital camera and had our family snapshots scanned for our home pages. By the time we completed creating our home pages it was approaching 4:30 p.m., yet everyone was still very enthusiastic and quite content. We were then provided with a disk to take our home pages back with us. The workshop was extremely educational and just pure fun. At the end no one regretted spending the afternoon indoors, but left with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. We are all very thankful to Paul, the UCSD graduate students assisting at the workshop, and the UCSD faculty for giving us with the opportunity to learn and have a lot of fun at the same time! In short, the WWW Workshop was a great success!
Larry Burton (Penn State)
A workshop for new EE/ECE chairs was conducted by John Proakis (Northeastern University) and Larry Burton (Penn State University) on Friday March 22, 1996 from 4:00-6:00 pm. About 25 new chairs/heads attended, along with a couple of "old timers" who just found it interesting. Roughly the first half of the session was devoted to initial statements from John and Larry about how they run their programs, along with discussion. Handouts were provided. During the second half of the meeting, each person introduced him or herself, and described some first impressions about being a new chair. The diversity of experiences that came forth were very interesting and informative. The attendees recommended that this be continued in future workshops for new chairs.
Nominations are requested for two awards. The NEEDHA Distinguished Service Award recognizes outstanding service to NEEDHA by a member or former member. The NEEDHA Innovative Program Award is presented to a department or one or more individuals who have developed and demonstrated an innovative program in EE/ECE/CS education. Nominations should be accompanied by a statement describing the accomplishments on which the award would be based, and should be sent to Kathy Ricker, NEEDHA Coordinator, email: kricker@iec.org, mailing address: IEC, 549 W. Randolph St., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60661-2208.
Deadline for nominations for awards at the 1997 Annual Meeting is January 15, 1997.
Paul Penfield, Jr. (MIT)
You can read elsewhere in this issue about the Annual Meeting in Orlando, March 14 - 18, 1997. The program promises to be one of the best ever; you can see your colleagues and trade ideas for effective running of your department. If you are a new on the job (as many of you are, since there is always a lot of turnover among department heads) you will especially appreciate the workshop for new chairs. There will also be coverage of the new ABET 2000 outcomes approach to accreditation, which has many perplexed. See you there.
NEEDHA has many means of communication among its members: the annual meeting; informal gatherings at various conferences, like FIE or ASEE; this Newsletter; the World Wide Web site (http://www.needha.org); the IEEE-maintained e-mail list; and the annual Directory of departments. Now there is another, the on-line version of the Directory. To access it, go to the NEEDHA home page and you can't miss the link to it.
You may be interested in knowing more about this Directory. It is actually more complete than the printed version. There is more information, including e-mail addresses for offices and people, and a bigger list of degree programs. The individual entries have hyperlinks to Web pages for universities, departments, people, and student organizations. The information can be maintained up to date at all times, whereas the printed Directory gets out of date quickly. The data in the directory is structured, rather than being simply text, so it can be used for many purposes, including many types of reports.
As is true with most data bases, the most important yet difficult job is maintaining data integrity. The responsibility is split between department representatives (often you, the department head, often a secretary) and the NEEDHA office staff. You use a Web form to change the information. At the bottom is a "Submit" button that sends the data to the NEEDHA office staff, who review it, possibly do minor editing, and then approve it for insertion into the data base. This two-stage process puts responsibility for accuracy on the departments (where it belongs) while preserving the office staff's responsibility for consistency. The system uses 10 CGI scripts with over 4000 lines of commented Perl code. It is being developed on a university computer for convenience, and when stable, will be ported to NEEDHA's Internet access service in Chicago.
Let me mention a few interesting features.
You may be interested to know how all this is working out. The Directory went into operation August 31, 1996. It started with data from the 1995-96 printed directory with about 287 departments. During the first month, the directory page was accessed 555 times, from about 150 different universities, and almost 2000 individual entries were delivered. The editing form was called 400 times, and there were 100 submissions of updates from 88 different universities (including one new entry). For those who care, 45% of the accesses were from PCs running Windows, 45% from Macintoshes, and 9% from Unix machines.
The NEEDHA Board considered some interesting policy questions.
The development of this system has been an interesting project. The NEEDHA Board would welcome your ideas for improvements, additional types of reports, and other ways in which it could serve NEEDHA members better.
NEEDHA's Board gets together for one of its two annual meetings.
Members of the NEEDHA Board of Directors and Committee Chairs for 1996-97 are:
As demonstrated by meeting evaluations and emails, the single topic of greatest interest to NEEDHA members is ABET Accreditation, specifically the replacement of the existing criteria by "Criteria 2000". An e-mail on accreditation from president Paul Penfield to NEEDHA members generated 39 responses. Acting on this interest, the NEEDHA Board, at its annual meeting in August, created the ABET Criteria 2000 subcommittee, with Bob White as chair. Bob is Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The remainder of the committee is presently being constituted, and NEEDHA membership will be kept informed of committee progress. The committee is expected to address two topics: (1) methods of curricular planning and assessment which will respond to Criteria 2000, and (2) methods of documentation and visit preparation to enable efficient and effective evaluation of programs with respect to Criteria 2000.
A long tradition of NEEDHA get-togethers at the ASEE Annual Meetings was continued this past summer, with an informal dinner held at the Sequoia restaurant in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 25, during the 1996 meeting. Nine department heads and five spouses participated.
Larry Burton reports that the affair was lively and enjoyable, with excellent food. The group agreed unanimously that the event was successful, and should be repeated at next year's ASEE meeting in the same format.
The camera's view of NEEDHA '96
NEEDHA officers & committee chairs try out their halos.
From left: Larry Burton, John Orr, Paul Penfield, Ken Galloway.
Is this how you do the Macarena?
Dave Conner's speech was well received by the banquet audience.
We were having a lively discussion before the camera interrupted us.
If you have not visited NEEDHA's World Wide Web site: http://www.needha.org, you have missed out on a wide range of up-to-the-minute information, including the NEEDHA Directory and information on the Annual Meeting.
1998: Oahu, HI, March 13-17 (Turtle Bay Hilton)
1999: Jacksonville, FL, March 19-23 (tentative)
2000: New Orleans, LA
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Other newsletters: 1995-96, 1997-98, 1998-99, 1999-00, 2001-02|
Created: Jan 13, 1997
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Modified: Dec 30, 1998|
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