Welcome to the Winter 2012 edition of The Source, ECEDHA's Newsletter which is distributed to members and industry, business leaders in the electrical and computer engineering and related fields. As you will see in this issue we have a terrific annual meeting program for March in Austin.

Thanks to the leadership provided by President Chen, John Janowiak and the IEC staff, regional leaders and the Board of Directors, ECEDHA is making great progress in providing information needed and useful for the electrical/computer engineering departments so that they can accomplish their education/research mission in these challenging times.

I also want to encourage each regional leader to send us news items from their regions to be included in the upcoming issues. I want to wish everyone much success in the year 2012 in achieving goals/objectives for their programs and use many resources that are available through the ECEDHA network. It is worth noting that our ABET annual workshop has been very successful part of the annual conference, so it is very important to remind your colleagues about the benefits of becoming a member of ECEDHA and after that keeping the membership active. In my own region (West) we had a very successful regional meeting in November last year hosted by my distinguished colleague Dr. Lal Tummala, ECE Chair, San Diego State University. The meeting also included a mini version of ECExpo and included a few industry representatives. See you all in March during the annual meeting and let me know of items you like to see in future newsletters.

Best regards,

Hossein Mousavinezhad, Editor, mousseye@isu.edu

Dear ECEDHA Members,

Greetings, salutations and Happy New Year of the Dragon! I hope your spring semester is progressing smoothly at each of your schools. Our spring annual event is approaching in a few months and I believe you will find that Steve Phillips, the ECEDHA regional heads, Barry Sullivan and the ECEDHA staff have put together an exciting program again. Ahmed Tewfik (UT ECE chair) has been kind enough to be our host institution for our conference in Austin, Texas. It is not too early to start planning for your ECEDHA spring conference trip. Please visit the website, register for the conference and do read Steve Phillips's description of the conference.

I am pleased to welcome Tsuhan Chen as our secretary-treasurer and to announce that I have appointed Pali Singh as our at large ECEDHA board member. I am pleased to announce that Steve Goodnick (our former president) has graciously agreed to fill in the term for Issa Batterseh as a member of the Board. As a result of these actions your ECEDHA board is at full strength. I wish to thank and recognize Tony Kuh for his dedicated support to our ECEDHA board as an at large member. His many contributions are most appreciated.

As a nation we recognize the many challenges facing our collective future due to globalization (see Thomas Friedman's latest work - "That Used to Be Us"), the poor performance of American children on standardized tests (see Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on education) and the state of corporate outsourcing of manufacturing and R&D (over half of GE's R&D is now overseas), and the imminent retirement of the baby boomer generation. As ECE chairs we form a crucial body that has an interest in how this scenario unfolds. We are uniquely positioned as we are the one "chairs"" specific engineering organization. I believe that we can and must play a role on this great stage to insure our collective futures. Our ECEDHA members must address many challenges: improving diversification, increasing ECE graduation numbers, dealing with flat to declining budgets. Collectively, what can and should be ECEDHA's role in defining the extent of these challenges to a national audience? Who do we collaborate with and develop a dialogue with - US industries, K-12 educational groups, Federal agencies, IEEE/ASEE ? I would like to propose to you for your consideration, the formation of task force groups of volunteers drawn from our organization to explore these (and other) issues facing us and periodically reporting back our findings and recommendations to our entire ECEDHA group (via the Source and/or at the Annual Conference).

One quote I think appropriate to share with you, "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for. It is a thing to be achieved". William Jennings Bryan (former Nebraska congressman and US Presidential candidate)

I look forward to greeting each and everyone one of you in March in Austin.

All the best,

Dr. Bing Chen, Chair
Department of Computer and Electronics Engineering
College of Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Omaha campus)

Rethinking the MS Programs in Engineering
By Ibrahim M. Abdel-Motaleb, Professor and Chairman, Department of Electrical Engineering, Northern Illinois University

Current MS degrees in engineering provide students with advance degrees, while supplying the educational institutions with revenues from tuition fees. Unfortunately, these degrees may not provide faculty members with the means to produce scholarly activities. They may not also be able to supply industry with qualified engineers from the highly innovative market. At Northern Illinois University, the Electrical Engineering department is working on the development of a new MS program, where strong interdisciplinary background is ensured and intensive research work is mandated to satisfy the needs of both faculty and industry.

View the full article >>

Preparing Students to Accelerate Innovation Through Simulation-Based Engineering and Science
By Jim Ryan, Worldwide Education Strategy and Marketing Manager, MathWorks

Many engineering companies have concluded that to remain competitive and survive they must strive to accelerate innovation through simulation-based engineering and science (SBE&S). Moveover, many forward-looking companies are now focused on enabling their engineers to "explore digitally, confirm physically." Using Model-Based Design, a significant number of design variations can be explored and assessed in software to help ensure that the first physical prototype works as intended and serves to confirm the selected design.

View the full article >>

This year ECEDHA is proud to announce the unveiling of its new interactive data system that will allow participating ECEDHA members to perform custom queries of the ECEDHA survey data. The annual survey has been a part of the ECEDHA program for more than a decade, collecting important comparative benchmark data on enrollments, salaries, graduate stipends, space allocations, graduation statistics, research expenditures, and much more. The new interactive data system is arguably a revolutionary upgrade to the ECEDHA survey that will allow members access to information like never before.

View the full article >>

ECEDHA Memberships are now up for renewal! All ECEDHA membership must renew their membership in order to remain a member in good standing.

ECEDHA members can renew their memberships online using our new membership renewal system.

Membership runs on a calendar year (January 1, 2012 - December 31, 2012) and must be renewed each year in order to remain an ECEDHA member.

Invoices will be sent out shortly, however, you may also easily renew your membership online via credit card.

For additional information, contact Michelle Klein at michelle@ecedha.org or 312-559-3724.

The IEEE Power & Energy Society is pleased to announce the inaugural IEEE PES Scholarship Plus Initiative^™ award recipients. Ninety-Three (93) PES Scholarship recipients have been selected from 51 U.S. universities for the 2011-12 Academic year. These scholarships are being distributed through the IEEE Power & Energy Scholarship Fund which is being used to support the IEEE PES Scholarship Plus Initiative.

The IEEE PES Scholarship Plus Initiative, provides multi-year scholarships and career experience opportunities to full-time, qualifying U.S. electrical engineering undergraduate students. Its goal is to support 300 to 500 students each year. As long as the scholar continues to meet renewal standards, he or she will receive up to three years of financial aid: US$2000 for each the first and second years and $3000 the third year and up to two years of much-valued career experiences. Offered in the United States now, the plan is to expand the program worldwide.

For more information on the PES Scholarship Plus Initiative please visit www.ee-scholarship.org.

2012 ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo
March 23-27, 2012
AT&T Conference Center
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas

Registration for the ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo is now open!

Join us March 23-27 in Austin for the most exciting ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo to date!

The Annual Conference is the only gathering of its kind for ECE Department Heads across North America and Canada to discuss the most pressing issues facing ECE today.

Program highlights include:

Hotel rooms are filling quickly!
Secure your room today!

For more information, please contact Michelle Klein at +1-312-559-3724 or michelle@ecedha.org.

Captured live at the 2011 ECEDHA Annual Conference, ECE Spotlight Sessions offer the opportunity to view short corporate presentations and to learn more about what these companies can offer you.

Featured ECE Spotlight Sessions:

From left to right: Agnieszka Miguel (Seattle), Alex Wong (Digilent), Hossein Mousavinezhad (Idaho State), Mehdi Etezadi Amoli (UNR), Giampiero Campa (The MathWorks), Peter Flores (National Instruments), Lal Tummala (DSDU), Scott Hanson (Digilent), Shaya Fainman (UCSD), Mo Shiva (CSUF), Ali Amini (CSUN), and Suresh Vadheva (Sacramento State)

The annual regional meeting of the Western ECEDHA was held on November 12th and 13thon San Diego State University campus hosted by Lal Tummala, Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The meeting was attended by 19 chairs. Mr. John Janowiak and Steve Phillips represented the national association. Dr. Hossein Mousavinezhad was able to get sponsorship from MathWorks, Digilent, and National Instruments. The meetings covered ABET issues, curriculum, student enrollment, and faculty recruitment and mentor issues.

>> Read more

Digilent is proud to announce the 8th annual US regional Digilent Design Contest, to be held on May 6-7, 2012 in conjunction with the IEEE EIT conference (http://www.eit-conference.org/eit2012/) in Indianapolis. Digilent Design Contests are engineering contests open to all students enrolled in any educational institution in that region

Dates

Jan 25, 2012 - Registration begins

Feb 13, 2012 - Registration ends

Feb 23-Mar 1, 2012 - Hardware distribution

Apr 10-15, 2012 - Pre-evaluation report submission

May 1, 2012 - Submission of final project reports and presentations

May 6-7, 2012 - Final presentations in Indianapolis, IN

Challenge

The contest is open to all students and the goal is to develop innovative projects using Digilent products. Students are challenged to create an original project using Digilent boards, whether FPGA boards featuring state-of-the-art Xilinx FPGAs, microcontroller boards featuring Microchip microcontrollers, or chipKIT boards based on the Arduino development environment.

Prizes

Digilent will be awarding prizes to the top finishers. Also, as a courtesy from Digilent, all participants who present their projects in the final EU contest will get to keep the Digilent hardware they used for their work.

You can learn about the contest at http://www.digilentinc.com/events/ddc2012/ or Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/Digilent?sk=app_244940582228984

Information on past contests can be found here: http://www.digilentinc.com/Showcase/Contests/ContestList.cfm

The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University offers undergraduate students a unique opportunity to participate in cutting-edge research with faculty members on topics of smart grid and smart energy systems.

>> Read more