Electrical and Computer Engineering Newsblog

Well folks, here we are – January 20, 2017, the end of one remarkable era in American politics and beginning of a new one that promises to be even more remarkable.

Readers of this blog can probably figure out which way I lean, but I do not want to use this site as a forum to air my own political views. As a spokesman for the ECE Department at Michigan Tech, where one can find a diversity of opinions on social and political matters, it just wouldn’t be appropriate. I will say this: I believe in our democratic system of government, and our capitalist system for organizing economic activity, and I also believe in the goodwill of most of the American people most of the time. There will be those in the next four years who will seek ways to take advantage of the shifting political landscape for their own personal gain and to the detriment of the American people, but I suppose this can be said of any era. As always, we need to be good citizens – the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and that applies internally as well as externally.

What would be appropriate at this time is for me to consider what I can do, along with the ECE Department and all the rest of Michigan Tech, to be a positive contribution to our nation, our society, and the State of Michigan in the next few years. This election told us a lot about the electorate, including some things that may have caught a lot of people by surprise, and so now is a really good time to re-examine how an institution like Michigan Tech fits in.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that the nation is really divided right now (wouldn’t it be ironic if we can’t even agree on that…). I’m not even sure if “divided” is the right word; maybe “fractured” is more like it. Part of this is due to economic and social forces that I will mention later, but unfortunately it is also due to the way we use technology to communicate with one another. Our use of mass media, social media, and the Internet allows each of us to be very selective about where we get our news and whose opinion we listen to. If we choose to, we can all live in our own bubbles where our own views and preferences are reinforced, and opposing points of view are not heard. This is not altogether a result of our own actions either – any number of our major sources of information, like Google, Facebook, or Amazon, have become very good at tailoring the information we see to our individual preferences. Some of this is very cool – for example, I do appreciate learning from Amazon about a musical artist I might really like – but the flip side of that coin is never having to hear something that conflicts with my worldview. As many readers know, I am an evangelist for electrical and computer engineering and all the benefits we have brought to society in the past century, but putting everyone in their own bubble is not one of those benefits. Another closely related thing I worry about is this: now that the Internet has brought about widespread access to information, which is a good thing, it has also brought about widespread access to misinformation, which is a very bad thing. I am not sure if electrical and computer engineers are the ones to grapple with this problem, but clearly it is happening on the systems we created.

Aside from the technology story, I think a larger issue for us at a place like Michigan Tech to consider is how our U.S. educational system shapes and influences our society. I have been in higher education for virtually my entire career, and so I have to believe that what we are doing is good. I do believe that. The American system of higher education is the mechanism by which thousands of young adults find out who they are and how they will make their way in the world. Our system is the envy of the world – far more students come from abroad to study in U.S. colleges and universities than the other way around. We are a major economic driver: the research coming out of university laboratories leads to new innovations, new businesses, and new economic opportunities for a large swath of the population. I can attest that there is no better place to work than a good college or university.

But…there is another side to this story. Yes, our universities are great, but do they serve everyone in the nation? I am not suggesting that everyone should go to college. I opposed, and continue to oppose, the idea that was floated during the 2016 election campaign that college should be universally free of charge. Not everyone should aspire to go to college, and making it free would greatly distort that decision process. People who for good reasons choose not to go to college should have the same respect as everyone else and have a decent shot at the American Dream. That being said, there are still ways that our higher education system can benefit all of our society. If those that have the intelligence, the talent, and the ambition to attend college can do so, and then use their expanded knowledge and skills to benefit all through creating businesses, designing products and systems, getting engaged in civic affairs, and generally being a part of the community that is the United States, then great. Unfortunately I often see something else happening: smart people come to college, they meet other smart people, they graduate and hang out with more smart people, they get married and have smart kids, and eventually they segregate themselves completely from the communities they came from. When that happens, our system of higher education is not living up to its promise. We hear a lot about segregation along ethnic lines, along class lines, and along wealth lines, but I believe that over the past century there has also been a segregation along the lines of intellectual ability, and I would suggest that this as much anything has led us to the divided America that we see today.

In one short blog entry I have touched on two pretty major topics that are relevant today: how technology influences society, and the rise of the cognitive elite. I hope you will forgive me for bringing them up and then saying so little. Entire books could be written about both topics – plenty of people have done just that – and I will continue exploring these ideas with you in future columns. In the meantime, I will close by saying that I am grateful to live in a country where the peaceful transfer of power that I just witnessed a few moments ago can happen, and that we have the opportunity to pursue our dreams regardless of the party in power. What happens in Washington has an impact on our lives, but it does not determine our lives. Reminding ourselves of that may be one of the best things we can do today, for people anywhere along the political spectrum.

– Dan

Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University

The ECE Department at Michigan Tech has a long and distinguished history in undergraduate education, having prepared over 8000 engineering students for meaningful careers since its inception in 1928. The times are changing, however, and Michigan Tech is changing as well. Some 40% of the engineering students in the United States now are graduate students, seeking MS and PhD degrees. Our programs have been evolving over the past 2-3 decades to respond to this changing demographic and to respond to the needs of the marketplace. Today our graduate programs are just as important in defining who we are and what we do as our undergraduate programs. This is not to say that we are building graduate programs just to respond to outside forces – in today’s world, a thriving academic engineering department is one in which undergraduate education, graduate education, and faculty-led research all co-exist in synergistic harmony.

The nature of our graduate programs is evolving over time as well. There are actually two distinct flavors of graduate study – that leading to the degree Master of Science (MS) and that leading to the degree Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). The PhD is the real research degree, where in effect we train our own replacements in the research community. It is a fairly long and arduous process of discovery – and self-discovery – involving close cooperation and collaboration between a student and his or her faculty advisor. The MS degree, on the other hand, provides students an opportunity to get advanced training and skills beyond what they learned as undergraduates, so that they can take on more technically challenging projects and become more valuable engineers for their employers or potential employers. There can be some research associated with the MS degree, and that possibility still exists at Michigan Tech. However, today the MS degree, under what we call the “coursework option” looks more and more like an advanced undergraduate degree, requiring 30 credits of advanced coursework beyond the baccalaureate.

In the ECE Department at Michigan Tech, we have been making steady progress in a concerted effort to grow our PhD program. We have a goal to graduate 10 PhD candidates each year, on average, and in our last 3-year goal cycle 2011-2014 we met that goal exactly. The growth of the PhD program happens in parallel with, but is not synonymous with, the growth of our faculty-led and externally supported research activity. The MS programs we have in electrical engineering (EE) and computer engineering (CpE) did not receive that much attention from the viewpoint of strategic goals, but we knew it was important to have a comprehensive slate of high-quality graduate courses so that we could meet the coursework needs of MS and PhD students alike. Then an interesting thing happened – our MS enrollment took off, totally out of proportion to our expectations! Our enrollment quadrupled over the past 10 years, doubling from 2005 to 2010 and doubling again from 2010 to 2015. In the Fall 2015 semester we had 200 MS students enrolled in the ECE Department, something that neither we nor anyone else at Michigan Tech would have predicted just a few years ago. Of course, we are delighted and gratified to see this level of interest in our programs, and are doing everything we can to meet the student demand.

One of things we have decided to do in response to this “success disaster” is create a new position of Graduate Academic Advisor. Many of these students are international and are new to Michigan Tech when they arrive. At the undergraduate level, the ECE Department has one and a half academic advisors – one full-time who advises 400 students, and one half-time who advises 200 students, roughly. (Aside: hats off to undergraduate advisors Judy Donahue and Trever Hassell, who do an outstanding job.) Using the logic that our 200 or so MS students also need dedicated professional advising, from someone with an academic engineering background, we proposed that the ECE Department create a position that was half-time advising and half-time teaching of advanced courses in areas where we needed to grow. Our proposal was approved by the university administration last summer. I am delighted to report that a successful search was conducted in the fall, and that we have identified the perfect person for the job – Dr. John Pakkala, currently of Milwaukee but soon to be back in the Upper Peninsula. I will have more to say about John after he joins the department this July.

Another aspect of our MS program that needs some attention is the diversity of the student population, in terms of country of origin and also technical area of interest. Right now we have an interesting situation in which the vast majority of our MS students are international, and are interested in power and energy. We can only guess how this situation came to be, although my guess is that it has a lot to do with the efforts of Prof. Bruce Mork and Prof. Leonard Bohmann over ten years ago to put all of our graduate courses in power and energy online. No doubt that created a lot of visibility and notoriety for that part of the Department. There is of course nothing wrong with having a lot of students from abroad – we love our international students and all that they do to create a rich cultural tapestry here at Michigan Tech. At the same time, however, many of our industry partners have openings for positions that require U.S. citizenship. We would also be meeting the needs of a lot of American students themselves by convincing them that an advanced degree would be in their own best interest, and in the interest of the state of Michigan. Therefore, one of our goals right now is to have the growth of the American side of MS student population mirror the growth of the international population.

A few years ago the university quietly created a program intended to do just that, to increase the number of U.S. students in our MS programs, by creating an incentive for our own undergraduates – primarily U.S. citizens – to stay for an extra year and earn that graduate degree. It is called the Accelerated Master of Science program. The crux of the program is this: while the BS degree requires a minimum of 128 credits, and the MS degree 30 credits, students in the Accelerated MS program may double-count 6 credits to apply toward both degrees simultaneously. This brings the total number of credits for the combined BS/MS package down to 152. It’s not a bad deal, and one to which we hope our undergraduates give serious consideration.

This year, under the leadership of the new Dean of the Graduate School, Pushpalatha Murthy, the Graduate School has decided to make a more concerted effort to promote the Accelerated MS programs across the university. The Graduate School is upping the ante by creating a financial incentive in the form of a one-time tuition award for students in their first semester of the MS part of the program. This award, called the Graduate Award for Academic Excellence, or GAEA, requires a nomination by the academic department, with the sole criterion being academic merit. In the ECE Department we are grateful to the Graduate School for recognizing the importance of the program and are optimistic that over the next few years we will be successful in our efforts to continue growing our MS program, in both size and breadth.

This column may not be the best venue for promoting the Accelerated MS program, since I have no idea how many of the readers are our own undergraduates (probably not many). Nevertheless, it can’t hurt to put it out there. Spread the word: the ECE Department at Michigan Tech has a graduate program that all our stakeholders can be proud of, and we are doing everything we can to make it better.

– Dan

Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University

Happy New Year once again to all the followers of the ECE Department at Michigan Tech! Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and productive 2017.

I learned earlier this week that 2017 is a prime number. 2016, on the other hand, has prime factors 2,2,2,2,2,3,3,7. I presume this means we can expect 2017 to be far less divisive than 2016. (I wish I could say I made that up. Credit goes to engineer and comedian Don McMillan, from his weekly e-mail blast.)

Houghton is in the grips of a week-long snow event, not all that unusual for this time of year. Temperatures have dipped down into the positive single digits, and we are getting a slow but steady influx of lake-effect snow. At these temperatures the snow is really light and powdery, so much so that you barely see it in front of your face, until you look up and realize the visibility is like a quarter mile, almost like fog. We can tell it is lake effect snow, since every once in a while one can see the sun trying to poke through. Essentially since there are no clouds – just snow. The skiing should be amazing this weekend if this ever lets up.

I heard about someone in town who has a Dalmatian who got lost out on the ski trails during the heaviest part of the storm. It hasn’t been spotted since. (OK, that one I did make up.)

All seriousness aside…

Let’s talk about resolutions for the new year. I have my personal ones, given some extra weight by the fact that I have a milestone birthday coming up in 2017. We don’t need to go into details; they can best be summarized as “be a better human being.”

In the ECE Department, a good new year’s resolution would be the continued pursuit of, and a renewed commitment to, our strategic goals. Strategic planning and goal setting are part of what we do all the time, in an effort to be the best organization we know how to be. We seek to offer technically challenging and economically relevant educational programs for all our students, and to have those programs undergo a process of continuous improvement. In our research activity we want to provide meaningful solutions for some of our nation’s most pressing technological problems. In both domains, teaching and research, we want to be recognized for our accomplishments, like all academic departments. I believe that the recognition isn’t nearly as important as what we do, but on the other hand without the recognition it is difficult to attract the students and research funding that allow us to continue our work. Prospective students find out about us and judge us by things like the U.S. News and World Report rankings and similar measures, so if we are going to have the opportunity to make a difference in the world then we need to be well-positioned in such rankings.

Right now the ECE Department is nearing the end of a 3-year goal cycle, and in the middle of drafting the strategic goals and a strategic plan for the next three years (these cycles coincide with appointment term of the chair.) Our current goals are grouped into three categories: 1) faculty success and recognition, 2) quality and impact of graduate programs, and 3) quality and impact of undergraduate programs. There are a number of individual sub-goals within those three groups. I will not list all the sub-goals; although they are not secret in any way, they are really more appropriate for internal deliberations, and for discussion with groups like our ECE External Advisory Committee. I will say that some of the goals are fairly straightforward and easy, while others are “stretch” goals that give us something challenging to shoot for – like the size and funding levels for our PhD program, for example.

For most of the faculty our goals are fairly high level and appear somewhat disconnected from what we really get out of bed to do, day in and day out. For example, it is hard to think about a goal of an undergraduate enrollment of N students when one has to prepare the next lecture or grade a stack of exams. However, we all need to remember that “every little bit helps.” If we approach every task, no matter how large or small, with a commitment to quality and excellence then the sum of the parts will be a thriving department.

Sometimes there are critically important tasks that come along that are not really reflected in the goals at all. We have one of those task before us this year – our accreditation by ABET, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. ABET is the independent organization that certifies the quality and consistency of all undergraduate engineering programs in the country, and every six years we have to go through an extensive process demonstrating that our Michigan Tech programs meet national standards for technical rigor and professional relevance. We are preparing all this year, and our efforts will culminate in a lengthy self-study report and a personal review by ABET visitors sometime in the fall. I am happy to say that we were successful in our last visit, in 2010, but of course we will need to work just as hard this year to ensure the same level of success. I am confident that, with the concerted efforts of our ECE ABET Coordinator, John Lukowski, the College of Engineering Associate Dean Leonard Bohmann, and the full and enthusiastic cooperation of all the ECE faculty and staff we will do just fine. So, right up there with our strategic goals, I am putting ABET accreditation on the list of new year’s resolutions for the ECE Department.

I hope all readers are successful with your own resolutions this year. I also hope that those resolutions include some form of engagement with the Michigan Tech ECE Department. Let me know what I can do to help!

– Dan

Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University

FWF is taking a break this week. The university has, for all intents and purposes, been shut down for the entire week, and yours truly has been spending holiday time with family and enjoying the many winter recreational opportunities this area affords. We will pick up again in January. Goodbye to 2016, and a very happy and productive 2017 to all!

– Dan

Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University