Dear staff and faculty of the College of Engineering,
I hope everyone had a safe and productive summer and that you were able to enjoy the total solar eclipse yesterday. As we begin the academic year, I wanted to welcome everyone back and provide some updates on the college.
There is much to celebrate. We continue to experience enrollment growth in both our undergraduate and graduate programs and had more than 500 new freshmen join the college last week. We hired seven new faculty last spring and they have all arrived safely and begun their new careers.
Even in this difficult budget environment, the college remains a priority of the state and the university’s senior leadership, and we are seeing continued investment in personnel and facilities.
Over the next couple of weeks we will be finalizing the draft programming statement for the new engineering building wth the goal of having it go before the Board of Regents in January. Please continue to go to http://engineering.unl.edu/building-campaign/ for updates on the building.
There have been some changes in the dean’s office. On July 1, David Jones transitioned to the role of interim chair of the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. David did great work as the associate dean for undergraduate programs and we wish him well in his new role. I am fortunate that Sohrab Asgarpoor was willing to step into this role and will be leading us through the ABET accreditation process this year. July 1 also marked the beginning of Mark Riley’s tenure as associate dean for research. I am very pleased to have Mark on the college leadership team.
This is an important year for the college and I will continue to provide you with updates as we move forward. Thank you for all you do for the College of Engineering.
Sincerely,
Lance