Welcome to our newest issue of Ingenuity!

Who doesn't like free pie? Our Dean's Desk feature photo this year was taken on an unusually warm February day. Look at the engagement our student organizations have helped create in our Russ College community. Our students care about one another, so they help each other out — and they do nice things for each other, too.

This sense of community is what we want to strengthen with our new 120,000 square-foot research facility, to be developed at the old McBee factory building on West Union Street. I wrote to you last year about our goals for its space: open idea sharing and entrepreneurship. What I couldn't report at that time was the status of funding and approvals for the renovation. I'm now pleased to share that the Ohio University Foundation has approved an additional payout on the Russ College's endowment portfolio that will be used to fund the building over a 30-year period. And, the Ohio University Board of Trustees has approved design through construction.

You'll read on our faculty news page that I'm entering my last year as dean. I've begun to reflect a bit on the goals that our faculty, staff, and alumni agreed upon almost 16 years ago, and that have naturally evolved over time. We've achieved most of them: a new learning facility — the Academic & Research Facility – has been built and is now one of the most used buildings on campus; our undergraduate population has grown from a low of 1,150 to 1,900 at the same time that students' entering credentials are improving; Ph.D. program enrollment has increased from 80 to 145, with students in a wider array of disciplines; and accreditation has consistently been strongly reaffirmed by the cognizant agencies. We're certainly preparing the engineering and technology leaders (not followers) of the future. Fund raising has been astoundingly successful, the demand for our graduates by employers is extremely high, research funding remains high – even through a period of time when we have a predominance of early and mid-career faculty – and the faculty we've been able to recruit are truly outstanding.

The Russ College student chapter of Tau Beta Pi celebrated "Pi Day" a month early in order to sweeten up National Engineers Week in February. Dylan Denner (middle), then-president of the Delta Chapter; and second-year graduate biomedical student Nicole Sova, who is also founder of new student org Eats with Engineers; served up free "pi" with some tasty bits about engineering.

We do have some work to do in the future, however. We must increase the enrollment of women and their representation among our faculty; we need to continue to grow, albeit at what I hope is a slower rate; and we need to re-evaluate our curricular and research areas of emphasis in response to current and future societal needs. As just one example, we need to be aggressive in pursuing faculty, certificates, and programs in cyber-security. For what we're already doing in that area, see our research feature story on page 6.

We're truly poised to not only be one of the best — which I think we already are — but to be widely recognized as such. That's what the next decade and a half holds for the Russ College.

Sincerely,

DENNIS IRWIN, PHD, PE
Dean
Moss Professor of Engineering Education
Thomas Professor of Engineering