MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
 am writing to you as the new department chair.
It is hard to believe that I have been on the faculty for 16 years.
Time flies when you’re having fun! It is a real honor to serve
in this role, and I am following in the footsteps of a strong legacy
of committed leaders. Professor
Erhard Joeres stepped down as chair after serving for five years
and being on the faculty for 33 years. We are indebted to him for all
his help in shaping the department.
The bottom line for my desire to be chair grows out
of my belief that the world is changing very rapidly. We must prepare
our students for tomorrow—not the world as we know it today. As
chair, I intend to help the CEE department respond rapidly to a changing
world and
a changing profession.
At the end of August, our faculty held a strategic
planning meeting. With the help of alumnus Norm Doll,
we were able to secure a professional facilitator who helped us apply
best practices used by leading companies. Looking outside the department
and university for help was a significant milestone for the faculty.
The facilitator did a wonderful job keeping us focused and on task.
As we tried to dodge issues, the facilitator would expose limitations
in our thinking and views, as well as help amplify the issues and opportunities
we were trying to articulate. It was a healthy and challenging exchange
and experience.
Specifically, we looked at the changing environment
for professional practice, strategic opportunities for CEE, the vision
of the department in 2014, and strategic initiatives. Through this process
we have identified seven strategic initiatives: effective governance,
improved undergraduate curriculum, financial stability, increased diversity,
strengthened reputation, organizational research plan, and efficient
administrative processes. (See website at
www.engr.wisc.edu/cee
to download the plan.) We have developed
action plans for the first three initiatives and are already working
on them. We will be meeting again in mid-January to measure our progress
and work through the other four initiatives.
Now the real work begins—taking action, being
flexible, and being willing to experiment with new ideas and approaches
to education, research and administration. It is not going to be easy,
but we have to work to create our own vision of the department, and
not be reactive to what is dealt to us.
For us to be effective, we need your help. We need
to expand our base of stakeholders. We need to engage our alumni and
industry partners in helping us get better in all facets of our department
(undergraduate and graduate education, research, and public service).
For example, we are in need of expanding the industry mentors to help
in our senior level capstone design class offered every semester. We
are in need to proactively recruit students to our department. This
includes aggressively pursing a more diverse student body. We must reach
gender equity in CEE in the next 10 years if we are to attract the intellectual
capital that the profession needs. Relative to ethnicity, we have a
long way to go to shape ourselves into a leading department in the 21st
century. We know we need to do something; we do not need a committee
to study this. We need to yoke up with our alumni and industry partners
and move to action and implementation.
Overall, we need to revive the BIG RED pride in our
department. We are stoking up the pride by creating opportunities to
interact with alumni and industry partners via our recent golf outing
and receptions in Janesville, Milwaukee, Madison, and Minneapolis/St
Paul. We also hosted a reception for the parents of our students on
November 6. If you have other ideas of how we can generate interest
in our department and activities, please let us know!
Please do not be shy. Stop and visit us, send us
a note and tell us about any fond memories you have of the UW, forward
the names of possible students we can recruit, suggest ideas in which
we can diversity our student body, and if possible, consider being a
mentor for our students.
On Wisconsin!
Respectfully Yours,
Jeffrey
S. Russell, PhD, P.E., F., ASCE
2205 Engineering Hall
1415 Engineering Dr.
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608/262-7244
Fax: 608/262-5199
E-mail:
russell@engr.wisc.edu
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