Engineering Interns Learn About Politics

Fifteen engineering students from across the country spent this summer in Washington, D.C., learning about technology policy-making through the Washington Internship for Students of Engineering (WISE) program. The program is sponsored by a group of engineering societies that recognized the need to bring engineering expertise into the policy process and to expose engineers to the intricacies of policy and politics. The idea is to help engineering students discover alternative career paths in legislative activities, including lobbying and policy-making.

Directed this summer by Juan Lucena, an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, WISE students researched and wrote policy recommendations for their sponsoring engineering societies on technology issues that are affected by federal legislation. WISE interns received training in policy-making from the staffs of their sponsoring engineering societies. The internships also included visits to Congress, federal agencies, and lobbying organizations.

Sponsoring organizations have included ASEE, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Nuclear Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the National Science Foundation, the National Society of Professional Engineers, and the Society of Automotive Engineers.

For application and deadline information on the WISE 2000 program, see www.wise-intern.org .

 

1999 ASEE Annual Conference Best Paper Awards

This award recognizes the best papers presented at the 1999 ASEE annual conference. One paper was judged the best overall and the others were selected from the ASEE Professional Interest Councils (PICs). The award consists of a plaque and $1,000 for each PIC paper and $3,000 and a plaque for the best overall paper. Authors will receive their awards at the 2000 ASEE conference awards banquet in St. Louis, Missouri.

Best Overall Paper

James Peterson, University of Idaho
Paper: "Feasibility, Design, and Construction of a Small Hydroelectric Power Generation System as a Student Design Project."

Best Paper PIC I

John Schemmel, University of Arkansas
Paper: "Reinforce Design and Construction Issues with a Comprehensive Laboratory Project"

Best Paper PIC II

Melissa S. Tooley, University of Arkansas
Paper: "Using a Capstone Design Course to Facilitate ABET 2000 Program Outcomes"

Best Paper PIC III

Craig Somerton, Michigan State University
Paper: "A Nusselt Number Correlation Classification System"

Best Paper PIC IV

Deborah Kauffman, North Carolina State University
Paper: "Peer Ratings in Cooperative Learning Teams"

Steve Duty has joined ASEE headquarters as the head of the Conferences Department. Duty is a Certified Meeting Planner with more than 10 years of experience in domestic and international meetings, conventions, and trade shows. Before joining ASEE, he was assistant director of industry affairs for the Association of the United States Army. There, Duty directed the operations of a full-service meetings/conventions department with a $2 million annual budget. He received his B.S. in hotel and restaurant management from the University of Houston.

ASEE Awarded Air Force Fellowship Program

ASEE has been awarded a contract from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to administer the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program. These fellowships are offered to individuals who have demonstrated ability and special aptitude for advanced training in science and engineering, and are awarded for study and research leading to doctoral degrees in mathematical, physical, biological, ocean and engineering sciences.

Fellows receive nearly $60,000 in stipend support over a 3-4 year period and full tuition at the university of their choosing. Fellowships will be awarded to a maximum of 150 people. The application deadline is January 19, 2000. For more information, see the NDSEG Web site at: www.asee.org/ndseg .

The GE Fund and NASA have awarded grants to ASEE in continued support of the Helen T. Carr Fellowship Program. This award was instituted to address the lack of engineering faculty role models at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Upon completion of the doctoral degree requirements, a fellow is committed to return to one of the participating historically black institutions. The program is administered by ASEE under the auspices of ASEE's Historically Black Engineering Colleges Committee. For more information, see the Helen Carr Fellowship Program Web site at: www.asee.org/fellowship/html/hbecc.htm .

Analog Signal Processing. By R. Pallas-Areny and J.G. Webster.
John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY; 1999, 586 pp., $99.95.

Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. By J.G. Webster.
John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY; 1999, 19,000 pp., $6,495.

The Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook. By J.G. Webster.
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL; 1999, 2822 pp., $129.95.

Recent Advances in the Characterization of Transportation Geo-Materials. Edited by Erol Tutumluer and A.T. Papagiannakis.
American Society of Civil Engineers, Reston, VA; 1999, 72 pp., $15.

Structural Engineering in the 21st Century. Edited by R. Richard Avent and Mohamed Alawady.
American Society of Civil Engineers, Reston, VA; 1999, 1132 pp., $110.

M. Dayne Aldridge has been named the dean of the School of Engineering at Mercer University. He was formerly the associate dean for cross-disciplinary programs in the College of Engineering at Auburn University and served as director of the Thomas Walter Center for Technology Management.

Sharon A. Brown, the James R. Dougherty, Jr. Centennial Professor in Nursing and associate dean for research in The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, has been appointed associate vice president for research.

Janie M. Fouke , former director of bioengineering and environmental systems for the National Science Foundation, is the new engineering dean at Michigan State University.

Mary Lowe Good, the Donaghey University professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, has been named president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ronald S. Gordon , former professor and head of the department of materials science and engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, is the new dean of the School of Ceramic Engineering and Materials Science in the College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

Douglas M. Green, former associate dean for research at Johns Hopkins University, is the new engineering dean at Marquette University.

John Hennessy, engineering dean at Stanford University, has been named the school's provost.

Kristina Johnson, a former University of Colorado electrical engineering professor, is the new dean of the Duke University School of Engineering.

Pradeep Khosla, professor of electrical and computer engineering and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and former director of ICES, has been named head of the ECE department.

Robert J. Mattauch, electrical engineering professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, has been named the school's engineering dean.

J. Derald Morgan has been named the University of Alabama's vice-president for university advancement. Formerly, he was engineering dean at New Mexico State University.

Paul S. Peercy, former president of SEMI/SEMATECH, has been named as the new dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering.

Win Phillips, former engineering dean at the University of Florida, has been named the school's vice president for research and graduate school dean.

Carolyn Stark Schultz has been named the new director for continuing engineering studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is former director of business development and marketing at Stanford University's Center for Professional Development.

David E. Thompson , mechanical engineering department chair at the University of New Mexico, has been named dean of the University of Idaho's College of Engineering.

Al Ingersoll, engineering dean at the University of Southern California from 1960 to 1969, died May 6. Ingersoll also served as director of the University of California, Los Angeles Extension's continuing engineering education program from 1969 to 1981.

Charles E. Wales, an ASEE Fellow and former chair of the Educational Research and Methods Division, died May 16. Wales was professor emeritus at West Virginia University, where he had headed the freshman engineering program. He was internationally known for his inventions (with Robert Stager) of the Guided Design concept for course organization.

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