Materials engineer Linda E. Jones to direct Smith College's Picker engineering program
Northampton, MA - Linda E. Jones, a high-temperature researcher from Alfred University, was recently named director of Smith College's Picker Engineering Program. Jones will begin July 1. Picker is the nation's first engineering program at a women's college.
"I am thrilled to become part of a program that is delivering an engineering education to prepare women for leadership roles in the 21st century," said Jones. "Engineers at Smith are educated not simply to solve problems others have set for them, but to identify problems and issues and, in doing so, to become responsible for the solution. Responsibility and leadership go hand in hand."
Jones has been a faculty member at Alfred U since 1991. She rose from assistant professor in ceramic engineering and materials science to professor and chair of the materials science and engineering program. She has received thirty-two national grants and awards totaling nearly $3 million to fund her research. She has also received seven teaching awards. Jones earned a BS in chemistry from Mary Washington College in 1980, and a masters and PhD in fuel science from the Pennsylvania State University.
Smith's Picker Engineering Program began in 1999 and graduated its first class in 2004. Twenty-seven women are expected to graduate from the program this year.
Dr Denice Dee Denton named chancellor
Santa Cruz, CA - Dr Denice Dee Denton, formerly dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington-Seattle, is the new chancellor of the University of California-Santa Cruz.
Denton was selected after a national search. "I am deeply honored by this appointment, and very excited to be joining the University of California and the UC-Santa Cruz community," Denton said.
Denton has a PhD in EE from MIT, where she also earned her BS and MS degrees. Denton was the first woman in the nation to lead an engineering college at a major research university. As dean of engineering at U Washington she directed an organization with ten departments, seventeen centers, 225 faculty members and an annual operating budget of $155 million.
In 2004 Denton was honored with a presidential award for excellence in science, math and engineering mentoring. She was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2000 and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2004.
Beowulf computer cluster at Embry-Riddle and Bethune-Cookman
Daytona Beach, FL - Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has acquired a high-performance computer cluster called Beowulf. The system was financed through a $757,825 grant from the National Science Foundation and is being shared by Embry-Riddle and Bethune-Cookman College.
Beowulf has 131 dual-processor nodes and 262 processors, each of which is a 64-bit, 3.2 GHz Intel Xeon. It uses the Red Hat Linux operating system. The cluster is located on Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach campus, but is shared via an Internet-2 link with Bethune-Cookman.
Scientists, engineers and students at both schools will use the state-of-the-art facility for research, research training, and activities that integrate research and education. Tasks like weather forecasting will now take a fraction of the time they used to.
The project is managed by a team that includes faculty from both schools.
NSBE names Carl Mack executive director
Alexandria, VA - On March 1 NSBE named Carl B. Mack as its new executive director. Mack is a former president of the Seattle-King County (WA) NAACP and a project engineer for Metro King County.
Chance Lundy, national executive chair, announced the appointment as she thanked outgoing director Michele Lezama for NSBE's last five years of growth. "Carl Mack brings a wealth of motivational skills and knowledge to this position," Lundy noted. "His background as an engineer and his success at the Seattle-King County branch of the NAACP clearly demonstrate his understanding of the dynamics involved in managing an organization that is diverse yet focused."
Mack led the Seattle-King County branch from a membership of six hundred to over two thousand. "I welcome the challenges this new position brings," he said. "I look forward to assisting the leadership of NSBE as it strives for excellence."
Steve Jarrett, VP of HR at IBM, serves on NSBE's board of corporate affiliates. He was a member of the search committee. "After reviewing Carl Mack's resume, as well as speaking with him, I saw a person who has dedicated his life to service," said Jarrett. "He was able to successfully balance the relationships between the NAACP, the corporate community and other stakeholders. We clearly have selected a person who understands the mission of this organization."
Smith Picker Program's Donna Riley receives NSF award
Northampton, MA - Smith College assistant professor of engineering Donna Riley has received a National Science Foundation award for new faculty. The award will fund her project to assist faculty seeking to adapt their classrooms and curricula to diverse learners.
With the support of the five-year faculty Early Career Development award, Riley will research and implement educational practices to engage underrepresented demographic groups, particularly women and minorities, in the study of engineering.
"I want to challenge educators to rethink the purposes and goals of engineering education," said Riley, a founding faculty member of Smith's Picker Engineering Program, the nation's first engineering program housed at a women's college. "We need to improve our ability to successfully attract, retain, educate and advance the broadest possible spectrum of students."
Riley's project will examine teaching practices at Smith that value social justice, learner responsibility and empowerment, classroom equity, real-world applications and other concepts. With input from students, colleagues and local K-12 partners, she will develop, implement and evaluate curricular innovations. Riley will study how women and minorities see themselves as engineering students and future engineers.
CCNY opens new facility for biomed engineering
New York, NY - The School of Engineering of the City College of New York (CCNY) has opened new facilities for its biomedical engineering program. It is the only biomed program at a public institution in New York City, and has a higher concentration of students from underrepresented groups than any other such program in the country.
The program offers bachelors, masters and PhD programs. It started offering PhDs in 1999, masters in 2000 and an undergraduate major in 2002. The department had thirty-four PhD candidates, eighteen masters students and 107 undergraduates in the 2004-05 academic year. Women account for 37 percent of undergraduate majors; 38 percent of undergrads are from minority groups. In 2001, the department received a $2.2 million award from the National Institutes of Health to fund scholarships for sixty-five students from minority backgrounds.
New Engineering Dean at Rice University
Houston, TX - Sallie Keller-McNulty will become the new dean of Rice University's George R. Brown School of Engineering in July. With her arrival Rice becomes the only major research university with women deans in both science and engineering. Kathleen Matthews is dean of the university's Wiess School of Natural Sciences.
Keller-McNulty comes to Rice from Los Alamos National Laboratory. She earned her PhD in statistics from Iowa State University and her bachelors and masters degrees in mathematics from the University of South Florida. Before joining the Los Alamos group, Keller-McNulty was professor and director of graduate studies in the department of statistics at Kansas State University, where she was a faculty member starting in 1985.
Keller-McNulty said she looks forward to working in the university's collaborative culture, and working closely with the School of Natural Sciences and the Texas Medical Center.
"Rice is such a preeminent institution, not just because of its undergraduate education, but also because of its fabulous research programs," Keller-McNulty said. "Rice is leading the way in making interdisciplinary science a reality, and I'm a strong advocate for that as the way to move science forward in this century."
IBM and FIU will develop autonomic computing solutions for hospitals
Miami, FL - IBM and Florida International University (FIU) have launched two new research projects that will use autonomic computing technologies to help solve challenges in the health care industry. The projects will help secure patient records and reduce the time spent in the waiting room. The partnership is part of IBM's Shared University Research award program. IBM will work with FIU professors and graduate students from the Telecommunications and Information Technology Institute in the College of Engineering.
"We are excited to have such cutting-edge research take place at our university," said Dr Modesto Maidique, president of FIU. "Receiving this award demonstrates the fact that we have world-renowned faculty who possess the credentials to forge new ground in research and development."
Under the collaboration IBM is supplying the university with eServer pSeries and xSeries server systems, as well as other IBM hardware and software. "Florida International University and IBM are working together to remove barriers experienced in today's health care industry," said Adalio Sanchez, general manager, IBM eServer pSeries.
FIU is one of the largest minority institutions in the United States, with the largest pool of Hispanic engineering and CS students in the country. FIU's College of Engineering graduates the most Hispanic minority engineering students in the nation.
Sandia, University of Texas system expand alliance
Albuquerque, NM - Sandia National Laboratories and the multi-campus University of Texas (UT) system have expanded their relationship. UT will develop an independent peer review process for Sandia's science, technology and engineering work. The lab and the UT system will develop programs to enhance Sandia's national security mission, and there will be increased interactions and collaborations among staff, faculty and students at Sandia and UT academic and health institutions. A key factor in the choice of UT for this partnership was the large number of degrees that the system awards to underrepresented minorities in relevant engineering and scientific fields, the lab said. Sandia is a multiprogram national laboratory with major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness. The UT System has fifteen campuses, including nine academic and six health institutions.
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Dr Winncy Du honored with ASME diversity award
New York, NY - Dr Winncy Y. Du, PE, assistant professor at San Jose (CA) State University has been chosen by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, www.asme.org) to receive the association's 2004 diversity and outreach award. The award is presented to an outstanding member who has worked to encourage inclusion and participation of women and underrepresented minorities in ASME.
Du is chair of ASME's Santa Clara, CA section, and advisor to San Jose State's ASME student section. Under her guidance both these groups grew significantly; women and minorities make up 81 percent of the college section.
In 2002 and 2003 Du received San Jose State's distinguished faculty mentor award. She is director of the robotics and manufacturing lab at the school's department of mechanical and aerospace engineering. She earned her PhD in ME at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
For more about the ASME award and programs contact Mary James Legatski. Phone (202) 785-3756 or visit legatskim@asme.org.
Toyota USA Foundation sponsors U Mich 2005 Summer Engineering Academy
Ann Arbor, MI - A $150,000 grant from Toyota USA Foundation to the University of Michigan College of Engineering will support the college's 2005 Summer Engineering Academy for junior-high and high-school students. The Toyota award will underwrite the major costs of a series of four structured summer math and science enrichment programs at the college that introduce 7th-12th grade students to the disciplines, challenges and career opportunities in engineering. The programs are open to all, but emphasize underrepresented minorities, the college said.
"Toyota is committed to the communities in which we do business and education is an important part of this, which is why we are very pleased to partner with such a prestigious institution as the University of Michigan and its College of Engineering," said Yasuhiko "Yas" Ichihashi, president, Toyota Technical Center, USA. "The Toyota USA Foundation was particularly impressed with the program's overall goal of making certain that underrepresented students have a chance to be exposed to the fields of science, technology and engineering."
"We are extremely grateful for the Toyota USA Foundation's generous gift," said Derrick E. Scott, director of the college's minority engineering program office. "We have found our summer programs to be one of the most effective ways to engage and excite young students about engineering and science. Toyota's gift will go a long way towards ensuring that these kinds of programs continue."
The Summer Engineering Academy is administered by university professors, undergraduates and graduate students. The Toyota USA Foundation is a $40 million charitable endowment created to support K-12 education in math and science. For more information, see www.toyota. com/foundation.
New study of women's employment in technology finds mixed results
Washington, DC - During the last two decades, growth in the employment of women in scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical (STEM) occupations has been uneven, said a report from the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST).
From 1983 to 2003 the commission found increases for women in the social and natural sciences, but minimal change in engineering and a decline in math and computer science.
- 44 percent of all jobs in the U.S. were held by women in 1983, rising to 47 percent by 2003. In STEM occupations the proportion was 19 percent; it rose to 26 percent in 2002.
- Only 10 percent of the jobs in engineering were held by women in 1983; in 2002 it was 14 percent. The largest gains were in ChE.
- In computer science the percentage of jobs held by women was lower at the end of the twenty-year period than it was in 1983. But overall growth in IT occupations was so strong during the 1990s that even while women's share of these jobs was declining, their absolute numbers continued to increase through the year 2000. After that the share started to decline.
"These are disappointing findings for STEM workforce policymakers and others who have worked for at least a quarter of a century to make better use of the talent of women in U.S. science and engineering," said CPST.
The CPST report, "Women in science and technology: the sisyphean challenge of change," is the second in a series from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded STEM workforce data project. The project uses U.S. government stats as well as private sources of information to identify, compile and distribute reliable statistics on STEM workers in the U.S.
The study and its data archive are available free on CPST's website, www.cpst.org. The next two reports, one on immigrants in the STEM workforce and one on underrepresented minorities, will be released in early 2005.
Smith College and Princeton University set up exchange program
Northampton, MA - Smith College, home of the Picker Program for women engineering students, has joined with Princeton University to establish an exchange program for junior-year students. The exchange will expose students from both schools to different learning environments and better prepare women to enter and succeed in the field of engineering.
Smith students and Princeton students, both male and female, who rank in the top 20 percent of their classes are eligible for the spring-semester exchange, which will start in 2006.
At Princeton visiting Smith students will increase the presence of women in engineering. Women now make up about 30 percent of the graduate and undergraduates studying engineering there. Princeton will give Smith students a chance to work closely with faculty members and graduate students and take courses at a major research institution. Smith does not have a graduate engineering program.
Teacher scholarship fund established
Washington, DC - The Department of Education announced the Siemens Teacher Scholarships, a collaboration among the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and the New Jersey-based Siemens Foundation (www.siemens-foundation.org). The scholarships will help minority students become math and science teachers.
Siemens will contribute $500,000 each to the Marshall Fund and the UNCF over five years, to be awarded to students accepted to eighty-five HBCUs.
MentorNet gets grants, recognition from IBM and Cisco
San Jose, CA - IBM has given a three-year, $150,000 grant to MentorNet (www.mentornet.org), a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit that links students and professionals in scientific and technical fields across the globe via e-mail.
IBM's grant supports the continuation of a seven-year strategic partnership with MentorNet. "In partnership with corporations like IBM, MentorNet has grown from serving 250 students at fifteen universities in 1998 to serving more than 12,000 students from well over 100 colleges and universities," said Carol Muller, MentorNet's founder and CEO. "This latest grant will enable us to enhance our capacity and extend our reach."
The grant, presented as part of IBM's Women in Technology (WIT) initiative, is a key element of a strategy designed to attract women to technology careers. "At IBM we know that the heart of innovation is the insight that comes from a workforce that is diverse and energized by technology," said Helene Armitage, VP, chief architect of advanced solutions, IBM Global Services, and executive chair of IBM's WIT sub-committee.
Earlier, MentorNet (www.mentornet.net) was a Grand Prize winner at the Cisco Growing with Technology Awards 2004. A panel of ten judges selected fifteen winners in five categories from more than 700 applications.
The Cisco Growing with Technology Awards program was created to recognize small- and medium-sized organizations that demonstrate how networking technology solutions can help companies fuel growth and compete more effectively. "This year's winners have proven that there is a correlation between a company's investment in networking technology and success," said Peter Alexander, VP for commercial marketing at Cisco Systems.
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