Engineering dean delivers state of school address, outlines strategic initiatives

By David Orenstein

Thanks to the breadth of excellence across the entire university, the School of Engineering will succeed as a worldwide leader in four strategic research initiatives, Dean Jim Plummer predicted at the annual State of the School address May 10. The recently launched initiatives involve research in bioengineering; environment and energy; information technology and photonics; and nanoscience and nanotechnology.

"Stanford is uniquely positioned to be competitive and to provide leadership because it is a great university across the board," Plummer said during an hour-long address to more than 100 faculty and staff at the Clark Center auditorium, during which he also provided a frank assessment of the school's progress in recruiting female faculty and students.

Each initiative requires multi- and interdisciplinary approaches and resources, Plummer said. That means engineers often will do their best work by collaborating with talented faculty elsewhere in the university, he said.

Strategic initiatives and collaboration

Bioengineering is the newest and most clearly interdisciplinary of the four initiatives. The schools of Engineering and Medicine jointly founded the Department of Bioengineering in 2002 and the department is just now wrapping up its first year with students. The department's mission is to look for ways to bring engineering and life sciences together to advance human health.

Bioengineering is an example of a field where Stanford has a clear competitive advantage, said Plummer, the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering. Among other top U.S. universities, only onethe University of Michiganhas a medical school and an engineering school literally across the street. Many other engineering schools must partner with relatively remote medical schools for their bioengineering programs. A local example is the University of California-Berkeley's collaboration across the Bay Bridge with UCSF.

Stanford's Bioengineering Department also is a prominent example of how the engineering school's priorities closely align with university-level strategic initiatives. All but one of the bioengineering faculty are affiliated with Bio-X, a university-wide research initiative in the biosciences. The department also is currently co-located with Bio-X in the Clark Center.

Likewise, the school's environment and energy initiativea focus on finding environmentally sustainable ways to meet human energy, water and economic needsis closely aligned with two other university priorities: the new Stanford Institute for the Environment and the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). GCEP's goal is to foster the development of large-scale energy systems with low greenhouse gas emissions. It involves 20 Stanford engineering faculty working with 15 faculty members from other schools.

Furthermore, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department has realigned its priorities around environmental sustainability in recent years. An upcoming showcase project within the school is the construction of a "green dorm" on campus, Plummer said. As currently conceived, the edifice would house 50 students but exact a tiny fraction of the environmental cost of a traditional dorm. Through feats of engineering, the building would recycle its own water and generate its own electricity. The green dorm also would include teaching, lab and demonstration facilities in its basement. President John Hennessy and Provost John Etchemendy approved the project last month. A feasibility study will be conducted by the end of this year.

The school's other two initiativesnanoscience and nanotechnology, and information technology and photonicsalso will benefit from new facilities, Plummer said. The newly renovated Stanford Nanocharacterization Lab will reopen in the McCullough Building this fall. Meanwhile, part of the Science and Engineering Quad II project includes a new Ginzton Lab, which will give photonics researchers 21st-century facilities to carry on their research. Researchers from the schools of Engineering and Humanities and Sciences will often collaborate at both facilities.

Female faculty and students

Despite Plummer's general tone of optimism, he was not sanguine about the engineering school's performance in recruiting female faculty and students. By some measures the school has done well: This spring U.S. News and World Report magazine featured Stanford for granting graduate degrees to more female engineers than any other school in the country. Similarly, the School of Engineering is doing at least as well if not better than peer institutions in terms of the number of female faculty. But Plummer takes cold comfort in these numbers. "We're still doing poorly in percentage terms," he said. Women still compose only 13 percent of the school's faculty. "We take [the low percentage] very seriously. [Recruiting] is absolutely a priority."

Most of the school's other performance metricsresearch funding, enrollment, teachinglook good, Plummer said. School money for departments, which took a 4.7 percent cut in fiscal 2004, fared much better this year when the school decided to allocate more to departments, resulting in an 11.3 percent increase. A similar increase next year, he said, should help departments shore up sagging reserves.

With strong research collaboration around the school, new facilities opening or planned and improved performance on gender inequity, the school should be well positioned for the future, Plummer said. "The School of Engineering is in great shape," he said.

David Orenstein is the communications and public relations manager for the School of Engineering.