DEAN'S CORNER
As the New Year begins, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the year that rather quickly came to a close. In those past twelve months, there was much to celebrate and, since the New Year brings with it a time for celebrating, there is no better time to celebrate than the present:
We witnessed Team Tidewater take on the world in the 2011 Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon competition. We held our Inaugural Distinguished Honors Celebration in honor of our alumni, friends and supporters. We made tremendous strides in photovoltaics and garnered numerous grants in relation to research in this area. We have been represented at as well as hosted several world and international conferences in fields spanning the engineering and engineering technology fields. We created the first engineering management and systems engineering handbook for the field. We discovered a number of notable alumni making news, from Wil James and Debbie Martinez to Kenny Wright and Jimmy Black, just to name a few. We saw the advancement of plasma medicine. We presented another successful Engineering Unplugged event with keynote comments by Ed Begley, Jr. We further cultivated our programs in biomedical engineering, offering both a minor and a Ph.D. program. We planned and executed a full-scale emergency response exercise for 140 emergency preparedness officials from all 16 local cities and counties in Virginia through VMASC. We were granted funding for our newest student learning facility, the Engineering Systems Building, which will be underway in early 2012. And, finally, we have begun gearing up for our 50th anniversary year in 2013. Another great year to be a part of ODU Engineering!
ODU Engineering has come a long way, and I thank all of our faculty and staff, our students and alumni, and our friends and supporters for their part in making that happen. Most of what we individually do may not appear in e-Interaction, on the web site, or in the news, but cumulatively you contribute to each more visible marker of success - steps that could never be achieved alone. I thank you for each and every success story that you have helped to happen in 2011 as we look forward to an even more academically prosperous New Year.
On behalf of the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology, best wishes for 2012!