[CCoE Notice] July Update

Wed Jul 13 16:42:50 CDT 2011

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http://egr.uh.edu/newsletter/deansmemo/images/tedesco.jpgDear Cullen College
Faculty and Staff,

It's definitely an exciting time at the Cullen College. Though it's the
middle of the summer, faculty and staff around the college are working
diligently on many significant initiatives that will materialize this fall.
That's in addition to routine grant funding opportunities currently being
pursued as well as many academic and industrial partnerships being
established through a variety of endeavors. The scholarly activity at our
college continues to move forward-a critical component of becoming a
competitive Tier One engineering program. Thank you for all your hard work!

Over the last couple of months, there were many distinguished
accomplishments earned throughout the college. Join me in congratulating the
following faculty and staff for these high honors and service:

Prof. Betty Barr (ECE) retired after 41 years of service to UH as a faculty
member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Read
article <http://egr.uh.edu/news/0511/?e=barr> 

Prof. Charley Dalton (ME) retired after 51 years of service to UH as a
faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Read article
<http://egr.uh.edu/news/0511/?e=dalton> 

Prof. Vincent Donnelly (ChBE) is the recipient of the American Vacuum
Society's 2011 John A. Thornton Award, an honor recognizing outstanding
research or technical innovation in the fields of thin films and plasma
processing.

Engineering Communications received a bronze Excalibur Award from the Public
Relations Society of America for Parameters magazine.

Zulie Flores (ME) received a 2011 UH Staff Excellence Award.

Prof. Kirill Larin (BME) has been named a senior member of SPIE, the
international society of optics and photonics.

Prof. Jim Richardson (ChBE) received an Excellence in Applied Catalysis
Award from the Southwest Catalysis Society. Read article
<http://www.egr.uh.edu/news/0511/?e=richardson> 

Prof. Wei-Chuan Shih (ECE) received a Best Paper Award at the Optics for
Biotechnology, Medicine and Surgery Conference. Read article
<http://www.egr.uh.edu/news/0611/?e=shih> 

Here are also a few announcements and updates that I'd like to share with
you:

NAE in Petroleum: Dr. John Lee, an acclaimed member of the National Academy
of Engineering and the L.F. Peterson Endowed Chair at Texas A&M University,
has accepted an appointment to join our Petroleum Engineering Program as its
first tenured faculty member. Lee will hold the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz
Cullen Distinguished University Chair in the Department of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering. After receiving his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
from Georgia Tech, he held a number of positions in the petroleum
engineering industry before entering academia. In addition to the NAE, Lee
is an elected member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is an honorary
member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. In fact, he has received
nearly every honor given by the society. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Lee
to the University of Houston!

IE Chair: I'm pleased to announce the appointment of Gino Lim, Hari and
Anjali Agrawal Faculty Fellow and associate professor, as the new chair of
our Department of Industrial Engineering (effective May 16). I'd like to
thank Fritz Claydon for serving the department in the interim.

ABET: Preparations for the upcoming ABET visit in September have been
underway and the required documentation for the re-accreditation of our
undergraduate programs in chemical, civil, computer, electrical, industrial
and mechanical engineering has been submitted. I'd like to thank Dave
Shattuck and each of the department chairs and their faculty for their
diligence in preparing for this very important review.

ConocoPhillips Gift: As you may have heard, ConocoPhillips has given $1
million to UH, with proposed future gifts of $1 million each year in 2012
and 2013, in support of the UH Energy Research Park. Our new petroleum
engineering building has been renamed the ConocoPhillips Petroleum
Engineering Building <http://egr.uh.edu/news/0711/?e=petrodedication>  in
recognition of this generous gift.

Executive Retreat Reports: Breakout reports from our Executive Retreat have
now been uploaded to our intranet site <https://www.egr.uh.edu/intranet/> .
These reports focus on issues relating to our undergraduate and graduate
programs, our research enterprise and overall alumni cultivation.

Faculty Assignment Guidelines: The newly generated faculty assignment
guidelines, which will be implemented in the upcoming fall semester, have
been approved. That document has been uploaded to our intranet site
<https://www.egr.uh.edu/intranet/> .

Subsea Engineering Industry Day: We held our first industry day for our
subsea engineering program to generate feedback from industry professionals
about the direction of our proposed master's degree option and to promote
our current certificate program. We received a great amount of positive
feedback and interest in this program.

Virginia Tech Research Park Visit: Joe Meredith, president of the Virginia
Tech park, will be visiting the UH Energy Research Park in early August to
discuss strategic planning and development.

ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Grant: Efforts are well underway for a
university-wide effort, led by the Cullen College, to obtain a National
Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Grant. The purpose
of the funding is to increase participation and advancement of women in
academic science and engineering careers.

NSF MRI: Several Cullen College faculty were recently awarded a $400,000
Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation.
Civil engineering professors Kaspar Willam, Ashraf Ayoub, D.J. Belarbi, Mina
Dawood, Craig Glennie, Thomas Hsu, Y.L. Mo and Vipu, along with Gangbing
Song and David Zimmerman of mechanical engineering, will use the funding to
develop a digital image correlation instrument to monitor and model failure
mechanisms in materials and structural components.

Thank you, as always, for your continued dedication and support!

Warm regards,

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Joe Tedesco 

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