Message from the Chair

Harold J. Steudel (33K JPG)

These are exciting times in the Department of Industrial Engineering. As you will see in this issue, the last year has been productive and fruitful in many ways, and plans are now underway for an exciting year in 2000.

I am happy to announce and welcome the return of Professor Pascale Carayon to the department. As some of you may know, Pascale was an associate professor with our department until August 1997, when she joined the faculty at Ecole des Mines de Nancy in France. With Pascale's return as an associate professor, she brings her leadership in integrating human factors, quality and information systems—a strategically important area for the department—as well as an excellent reputation and quantitative skills.

One of the key objectives of this biannual newsletter is to establish better communications with you—our alumni and friends. We would like to hear from you with updates to your addresses, job titles and any interesting goings-on so that we can enhance the accuracy of our alumni database and share the good things that are happening with your lives and careers.

We are also in the early stages of planning an alumni reunion for our 30th anniversary in conjunction with Engineers' Day on Oct. 20 and 21, 2000, and the Purdue football game. Included in the reunion would be:

• A block of football tickets that alumni and faculty could purchase
• A pregame department tailgate
• A Friday-night dinner for alumni & faculty
• A set of seminars on Friday and Saturday in which faculty, students and alumni show off what they have been doing
• A meeting with the chair & faculty leaders to talk about department future directions and needs, and solicit alumni feedback
• Tours of research labs

Does this event interest you? Just E-mail me at steudel@engr.wisc.edu to let me know what you think so that we can start the preparations.

Our students are continuing to do great things, and the job market continues to be terrific for our graduates. It also looks like we have recruited another great group of students for the fall semester. We are currently working on ways to generate funds to provide more scholarships to our undergraduates and fellowships for graduate students. This fund-raising issue—along with the funds needed for remodeling the Mechanical Engineering Building—represents a challenge, given our relatively young age.

I hope that you enjoy this newsletter. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

Harold J. Steudel
360 Mechanical Engineering Building
1513 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706-1572

Tel: 608/262-9927
Fax: 608/262-8454
E-mail: steudel@engr.wisc.edu