Dear CoE Faculty and Staff,
As we close out another successful fall semester, I am happy to send you the latest edition of the College Update. It is gratifying to be part of such an active and innovative community, producing outstanding achievements in engineering education and research. Together we do amazing things!
With the holidays upon us, please enjoy some well-deserved time off with family and friends. Come back refreshed and energized, and then we will do this all over again beginning in January!
Holiday cheer,
Dave
Student and Educational Programs Updates
Statistics About Our Accomplished, Diverse First-Year Class
This past fall, 1,266 first-year students enrolled in the College. These students were selected from a pool of more than 11,000 applicants, a 17% increase over 2012. The median high school GPA of these students was 3.9, with a median SAT score of 2180 (including writing), and a median ACT score of 32. Women comprised 30% of the incoming class, and 10% of our new students come from underrepresented groups. Since 2005, the College’s selectivity (% of applicants admitted) has improved from 72% to 29%.
SHPE Awarded National Chapter of the Year and Outstanding Regional Chapter
During the recent annual Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) national conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, the University of Michigan’s chapter was awarded SHPE National Chapter of the Year (out of 262 student chapters across the nation) and Outstanding Regional Chapter for their work during the last academic year. These are the highest awards any student chapter can receive at a national and regional level. SHPE founded a Junior Chapter at Western International High School and held several college workshops to educate students and parents in Southwest Detroit. A group of students took the first SHPE Abroad trip last summer to Costa Rica to help build a school in an impoverished community.
SWE Receives Outstanding Collegiate Section Gold Award
At the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) annual conference held in October in Baltimore, Maryland, the University of Michigan section received the Outstanding Collegiate Section Gold Award. This highly competitive award was presented in recognition of its “outstanding overall program,” including outreach, professional excellence, and diversity. This is the second consecutive year that U of M SWE has received this award.
MEZ Gets Ready for Robotics Season
The Michigan Engineering Zone (MEZ) is preparing for the 2014 FIRST Robotics season, which begins in January. This year, 13 high schools from both the Detroit Public Schools and the Education Achievement Authority will participate in this Michigan Engineering effort. Since this past summer, teachers and mentors have been actively engaged in orientation and planning for the upcoming season. More than 200 students, teachers and mentors have studied safety training, machine-shop equipment operating procedures and MEZ rules. The MEZ will host workshops to train students in LabView and Autodesk Inventor CAD design software. Twenty Michigan Engineering students will serve as MEZ mentors with two undergraduate coordinators. If you are interested in mentoring, please email the MEZ at mezdetroit@umich.edu.
Hometown Alumni Involvement Link Launches
Hometown Alumni Involvement Link (HAIL) is a pilot program of alumni interviews of prospective students. HAIL will provide Recruitment and Admissions a more holistic view of applicants. HAIL has launched its efforts in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Approximately 100 alumni will participate in the program to engage 500 students.
Own It Program
Own It is a new CoE student-initiated group charged with broadly addressing issues of personal and social responsibility. More specifically, Own It is a commitment in which each member takes responsibility for themselves and for the compassion and proactive inclusion of our student body.
Own It hosted a very successful inaugural event on Thursday, November 21, with an audience of over 200 people. Speakers included: Dean David Munson, Stephenie Landry, director of Amazon Baby and Amazon Mom, and Ed Seaberg, VP of IT operations at Rockwell Automation. Each speaker discussed the importance of LGBTQ inclusion in the workplace and their own experiences. Own It continued the momentum of addressing this particular social inclusion issue with Ally Training on Tuesday, December 3.
Each semester, a specific topic of social or personal responsibility will be addressed. If you have interest in learning more about Own It, please email the core student group at ownitmichigan@umich.edu or contact Angie Farrehi, Own It advisor, at afarrehi@umich.edu.
Honors Program
The College of Engineering Honors Program is seeking exceptional undergraduate students who exhibit technical excellence, commitment to educational breadth, and the potential to make a difference as leaders in their fields. Since the program was established in 2012, more than 150 students have become part of the engineering Honors community, including those pursuing Engineering Global Leadership (EGL), which is now a specialization of the larger CoE Honors program. Biomedical Engineering junior, Hannah Cheriyan has found tremendous value in the program: “Meeting other Honors students who are just as passionate and driven by their interests has helped me see how our unique perspectives can better the world.” To recommend a potential candidate or explore other ways of connecting with Honors, please contact Stacie Edington (sjed@umich.edu) in the Honors and Engagement Programs Office or visit the new office location in 251 Chrysler Center.
Multidisciplinary Design Program
The Multidisciplinary Design Program has grown again this academic year to accommodate demand for hands-on experiences in engineering design, with most areas of the program oversubscribed and requiring waitlists. More than 1,000 students from across campus have participated in co-curricular workshops and industrial site visits/field trips in the past year. Highlights of the fall 2013 semester included:
- Design Immersion: 230 members of the incoming freshman class participated in 36 hours of hands-on designing, building and testing
- Provisional patent filed jointly with Kellogg Eye Center for medical diagnostic tool
- Software developed for JPMorgan Chase implemented enterprise wide
- Industrial field trips to Stryker’s and General Motors’ manufacturing facilities
A specific area of growth in the Multidisciplinary Design Program stems from significant student demand for client design and research-based project experiences. In a pilot effort led by Associate Dean Alec Gallimore, more than 60 master’s students are joining our competitively selected 150 undergraduates to complete 33 Multidisciplinary Design Projects for 2014. These efforts are all multidisciplinary, team-based, two semesters long and centered on a real client or faculty research project. Project teams include: 30% women students, 8% URM students and 26 students from outside of Engineering.
Office of the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education Updates
Engineering Graduate Symposium
The 8th Annual Engineering Graduate Symposium (EGS) was held November 15, 2013. More than 175 top engineering students from across the country visited to learn about the College and graduate-student research. Some 270 posters were presented by CoE graduate students, highlighting the College’s commitment to collaboration, innovation, and communication in an interdisciplinary environment. This year, the symposium was supported by a record number of sponsors (20) including start-up companies. The 2013 Richard & Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Research was awarded to Armin Alaghi (CSE), Weiqiang Chen (ME) and David Lai (BME). These students were honored at the EGS awards dinner and will be recognized at the College’s Student Leaders & Honors Brunch in March. EGS technical session winners (51 students) also were honored at the awards dinner. The full list of all symposium award recipients is located on the event website: http://gradsymposium.engin.umich.edu/home/award-competitions/2013egswinners.
This year’s keynote address was given by Dr. Tetsushi Kanda, the 2013 CoE Inaugural Arbor Networks Ph.D. Research Impact and Lecture award recipient. In 1998, he received his Ph.D. from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, in Dr. Victor Li’s research group. Dr. Kanda is currently the general manager of the building construction and materials research group at the Kajima Technical Research Institute.
NextProf Future Faculty Workshop
The second successful NextProf Future Faculty workshop took place in September. NextProf was created to encourage underrepresented minority and women senior doctoral students and post-doctoral scholars to consider pursuing academia as a profession. The inaugural workshop occurred in the fall of 2012. A total of 53 underrepresented minority scholars participated in sessions detailing the rewards and challenges of life as a professor, what universities look for in prospective faculty, how to develop a teaching philosophy, and how to build a research program. This year’s session covered similar topics for 75 female scholars from around the country.
Plans are now underway for two workshops in 2014: an internal session for Michigan students (May 2014) and an external session in the fall for underrepresented minorities. Look for emails starting in January about how you and your department can work with the planning team.
Strategic Plan Updates
As an outcome of the strategic planning process initiated a few years ago, the College has created a “dashboard” overview of key indicators. Of course, no simple list of statistics can capture the impact of all the work we do. This tool will help the Dean’s Cabinet and department chairs to assess progress in certain key areas.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4AHTGUhGDXoRmxYR01vckZXa3M/edit?usp=sharing
Advancement Updates
In October, you received an email introducing the Victors for Michigan Campaign, along with a copy of the case statement. Recently, the Office of Advancement and the Office of Communications and Marketing have collaborated to initiate a variety of innovative approaches to thank donors and launch the campaign.
Campaign Kickoff Begins with GlowOut
The most ambitious fundraising campaign Michigan Engineering has ever undertaken has begun. On November 8, an estimated North Campus crowd of 2000 U-M students, faculty, staff and alumni joined in a “GlowOut the Diag” celebration, as the Victors for Michigan Campaign was officially launched.
http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/news/stories/2013/october/kickoff-party
http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/news/stories/2013/november/campaign-announce
The Victors Experience/Become a Victor
“The Victors Experience” and “Become a Victor” are new websites that support the Victors for Michigan Campaign. The Victors Experience is a customizable site that showcases examples of the three CoE priorities for the Campaign: Addressing Societal Imperatives, The Student Experience, and Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. Become a Victor is a new U-M site that encompasses a wide range of giving opportunities by category. See Become a Victor for departmental and other opportunities to participate throughout the life of the Campaign.
http://victors.engin.umich.edu/
https://leadersandbest.umich.edu/find/#/scu/eng
Michigan Engineering Fund Impact Video
For the first time, a description of the impact of gifts to the Michigan Engineering Fund—the College’s primary discretionary fund for more than 50 years—is available in video form. Many donors to the College of Engineering during the Victors for Michigan campaign have made gifts of $1,000 or less. In aggregate, these contributions will have a major impact on Michigan Engineering.
engin.umich.edu/college/giving/why/impact-report
ABS Professorship
American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) has endowed the ABS Professorship Fund. This gift will be used to establish and support the ABS Professor in Marine and Offshore Design Performance in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.
Chao Fellowships
Dr. Betty Chao (BSE IOE ’78, MSE ’79), of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has made a bequest gift of approximately $5 million. Her gift will provide for graduate fellowships and will help the College remain a diverse, creative community, inclusive of female engineers. She is founder, president, and CEO of Westech International Inc.
Immelt Scholarships
Jeffrey and Andrea Immelt have endowed the Jeffrey and Andrea Immelt Scholarship Fund. Andrea Immelt (BGS’78) is an LSA graduate. The purpose of the gift is to provide need-based scholarships to CoE undergrads because the Immelts recognize the critical importance of engineers to our society. Mr. Immelt is chairman and CEO of GE.
Center for Entrepreneurship Updates
The Center for Entrepreneurship has made tremendous strides this semester by conducting 33 workshops, seminars and lectures reaching more than 1,000 students across the entire campus. The CFE also held more than 200 advising appointments to help students shape the framework of their entrepreneurial ideas and lead them towards success.
Ask an Entrepreneur
The Center for Entrepreneurship piloted a new program this November called “Ask an Entrepreneur.” The program provides students with an opportunity to meet one-on-one with successful entrepreneurs and gain advice about their innovative ideas. More than 20 students met individually with three highly regarded entrepreneurs including Aaron Crumm (MSE MSE ’97, PhD ’00), founder of Ultra Electronics, Adaptive Materials, Inc.; Jeff Sinclair (BSE CE ’79, MBA’81), McKinsey consultant and founder of Caithness, LLC; and David Tarver (BSE EE ’75, MSE ’76), co-founder of Telecom Analysis Systems. Due to the success of the mentor program, the Center for Entrepreneurship plans to continue the program and welcomes Tom Porter (MBA ’67), co-founder of EDF Ventures, as another mentor for aspiring entrepreneurs.
When and Why I Chose to Lean In
More than 80 students, faculty and staff attended the “When and Why I Chose to Lean In” panel discussion on October 28. The panel included a group of esteemed women in the business community sharing experiences from their career and the decisions that led them to where they are today. Panelists included Christine Dauenhauer (BSE CompE ’92), senior associate director, Global Business Services, Procter & Gamble; Jan Garfinkle, founder and managing director, Arboretum Ventures; Janine Eldredge- Panos, associate director, Global Market, Procter & Gamble; Nancy Love, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, U-M CoE; and Natalie d'Aubermont Thompson, founder and CEO, SALTAR Consulting LLC, Huffington Post Contributor.
TurtleCell Wins $10,000 at Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition
On November 15, U-M student startup TurtleCell won the People’s Choice award at the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition, a statewide business competition held in Detroit. Founders Nick Turnbull (BSE ME ’13) and Paul Schrems (BSE ME ’11, MEng ’12), both with mechanical engineering backgrounds from U-M, showcased their innovative smartphone case with a retractable built-in set of headphones to win the $10,000 prize. TurtleCell took advantage of CFE’s resources by vetting their initial pitch to staff, competing and winning in U-M’s 1,000 Pitches Competition, participating in the student startup incubator TechArb, and attending the West Coast Startup Trek in the Bay area. TurtleCell is currently a tenant at Ann Arbor SPARK with hopes of distributing their product by summer 2014.
Berry Logistics Wins Grand Prize at MIT-CHIEF
The 2013 MIT China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum Business Plan Contest concluded on November 16, with Berry Logistics, a startup co-founded by three U-M students, taking home the grand prize of $10,000. CoE graduate student Sean Hsu and LSA students Darren Hou and Jeffery Zhang created Berry Logistics, which designs, manufactures and implements products that can be used to improve shipping and handling practices in supply chains. Prior to entering the contest, the team participated in CFE’s Michigan Collegiate Innovation Prize, a six-month formal mentorship program dedicated to providing workshops and guidance to up-and-coming entrepreneurs. The team also used advising hours at the CFE to shape their business model and prepare for the competition as well as apply and receive the Jump Start Grant and the Dare to Dream assessment grant.
Meredith Weber Joins CFE
Meredith Weber has been named the marketing and communications specialist for the CFE. Prior to her appointment, she worked in the U-M Office of University development in the Marketing and Annual Giving Department.
MCubed Inaugural Symposium
More than 1,200 members of the University community registered to attend the first MCubed Symposium. Over 200 cubes (groups of at least three faculty members plus students and postdocs) reported on the progress of their research at the November 15 event. The symposium featured TED-like talks in Rackham Auditorium and at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, concurrent academic sessions at the Michigan League, and over 150 posters, mostly in the League’s Ballroom. In addition, the keynote presenter was Tony Fadell (BSE CompE ’91), father of the iPod, and co-founder and CEO of Nest Labs.
Respondents to a post-symposium survey were overwhelmingly positive, especially regarding the creative, collaborative power of the University of Michigan, showcased in one place. Look for more research results and additions to the program in the future.
Faculty News
Associate Deans Accept New Responsibilities
Jack Hu (ME, IOE), J. Reid and Polly Anderson Professor of Manufacturing Technology, associate dean for academic affairs, has been appointed U-M interim vice president for research, and Alec Gallimore (AERO), Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, associate dean for research and graduate education, has been appointed CoE associate dean for academic affairs, both effective January 1, 2014. Congratulations to Jack and Alec.
Volker Sick Named Arthur F. Thurnau Professor
Volker Sick (ME), associate vice president for research — natural sciences and engineering, has been named an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. Criteria for the award include a strong commitment to students and to teaching and learning, excellence in teaching, innovation in teaching and learning, a strong commitment to working effectively with a diverse student body, and a demonstrable impact on students’ intellectual or artistic development.
New AAAS Fellows
The following faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are being honored for their efforts to advance science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.
Mark Barteau (ChE), DTE Energy Professor of Advanced Energy Research and director of the Energy Institute
Sharon Glotzer (ChE, MSE), Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering
Peter Ma (Dentistry, BME, MSE), Richard H. Kingery Endowed Collegiate Professor of Dentistry
Junior Faculty Awards
Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos (CEE), NSF CAREER Award
Chris Fidkowski (AERO), DOE Early Career Award
Mark Flanner (AOSS), NSF CAREER Award
Don Siegel (ME), NSF CAREER Award
Krista Wigginton (CEE), NSF CAREER Award