Third dean finalist shares ideas at open forum

By Kurt Esposito
Summer Editor

The third finalist for the dean of the Schools of Engineering said engineering needs two things in order to excel: resources and direction.

"You can't excel without resources. You can't excel without knowing where you are going in the future," said Way Kuo, Texas A&M University's Royce E. Wisenbaker Chair Professor of Engineering in Innovation, executive associate dean of the Look College and associate vice chancellor of engineering.

He spoke to a one-fourth filled auditorium as part of open forum for the position of the dean of the Schools of Engineering.

The dean of the Schools of Engineering Richard Schwartz will step down June 30.

Kuo said the schools should have specific goals and ways to achieve those goals. He said that with the changes that will occur within the next five years in engineering, the schools need more communication to work on the developing studies that overlap in the different fields.

"I'm not just talking about multi-disciplinary research, I'm talking about multi-disciplinary education," he said.

Kuo outlined four tasks that the future dean of the academic school needed to follow: benchmark everything they get involved with, focus on faculty recruitment and retention, garner more endowments and have close contact with the department heads in the schools and with the deans of the other academic schools.

Judy Russell, administrative assistant for the Schools of Engineering, asked how comfortable Kuo was with asking individuals and corporations for monetary gifts. Kuo said when asking for gifts, a dean needs to be a businessman and promote the research and education of the schools. He said most potential contributors only care about results and not the technical aspects of research, so a dean should only talk about results when asking for funds.

He said deans also should to know where to look for contribution. He said Purdue has many wealthy alumni living in Asia who have still not been tapped for contributions.

Kathleen Howell, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, asked Kuo how he felt about diversity in the schools. Kuo said diversity is necessary. One of the reasons he gave is that the companies who recruit the students only want to look at diverse schools to do recruiting.

He said in order for the engineering programs to become diversified everyone needs to be committed to making it happen.

• The fourth and last finalist Linda Katehi, associate dean for academic affairs in the University of Michigan's College of Engineering and a professor of electrical engineering, will speak at 2 p.m. May 31 in the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall.

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