Voiland College > Employee Resources > Dean's Letters > Welcome Back – Fall 2016

Welcome Back – Fall 2016

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you all had a restful summer and are excited about the upcoming school year. Welcome, especially, to our new faculty and staff who are joining the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture. We have an exciting year ahead as we move forward with our new leadership at the university and begin the search process for the college’s new dean.

As you may know, one of the biggest factors that contributes to our students’ success is that they become a part of our Voiland College community. Our graduates are known for their work-ready, hands-on skills, which they often gain outside the classroom. As your classes get underway, I strongly encourage you to invite your students to take advantage of our many extracurricular offerings here in the college, including:

Please include information about these opportunities whenever possible with your class materials. I encourage you and your students to join us on our college social media channels. Our Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter pages allow you to stay in touch with students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and get a daily, quick snapshot of the exciting work that is happening around the college.

I also invite you and your students to join us for the college’s annual ice cream social on August 25, 3-5 p.m. in the ETRL courtyard. There will be plenty of ice cream, and the event is a great chance to chat with your students, learn about the exciting projects in the college, and visit with your colleagues.

Finally, I know we are all busier than ever as the school year gets underway, but I want to make sure we keep focused on providing the highest level of safety for all of our students, faculty, and staff. For any faculty, staff, or graduate students who spend time in labs, please sign up for one of four important laboratory trainings that will be held in the next several weeks (see below for dates). The sessions, which will be held in the new PACCAR Environmental Technology Building, will cover topics such as general laboratory safety, hazard communication, dangerous waste generation, chemical storage, and emergency response and planning. The Department of Environmental Health and Safety will conduct these important sessions. I look forward to working with you in the upcoming year on providing more training opportunities and information on these critical topics.

Go Cougs!

Interim Dean Don Bender signature

Don Bender,
Interim Dean
Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture

Congratulations!

The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science’s Anjan Bose received the CIGRÉ U.S. National Committee’s Philip Sporn Award, which is the organization’s highest award and recognizes recipients for “Cumulative career contributions to the advancement of the concept of system integration in the theory, design and/or operation of large high-voltage electric systems in the United States.”

The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science’s Noel Schulz was recognized as a 2016 IEEE Fellow at the IEEE Power & Energy Society meeting in July. IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

Michael Kessler, Berry Family director and professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, has been named a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Learn more about what’s happening at Voiland College.

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Did You Know?

School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering’s Jinwen Zhang was recently quoted in CNN’s feature about a South African schoolgirl who recently won the Google Science Fair’s Community Impact Award for the Middle East and Africa with her submission “No More Thirsty Crops.”