Contact: Bob Ratliff
Mississippi State is joining an elite university consortium focusing on engineering education.
MSU now is a council school of SUCCEED, the Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education.
Established in 1992, SUCCEED works to revitalize undergraduate engineering education for the 21st century. Clemson, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Florida are among the original member universities in the National Science Foundation-funded coalition.
Joining MSU in the new-member category are the University of Central Florida, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, University of Louisville (Ky.), and Virginia Commonwealth University, among others.
"SUCCEED fosters the infusion of technology into the learning environment and establishes processes to improve the success of student transitions," said director Tim Anderson, who also heads Flordia's chemistry department.
The use of computers in undergraduate education and the recruitment and retention of women and minorities in engineering programs are among two specific areas the consortium currently is addressing.
The organization's goals are easily compatible with those of MSU's College of Engineering, said Dean Wayne Bennett.
"The most important of those goals is to train a new type of engineer with the strengths of the traditional engineering specialist plus the ability to use cross-functional team approaches to problem solving and product development and production," Bennett said.
Bennett said membership in the coalition already has enabled the college to receive help from a Virginia Tech specialist in establishing its personal computer initiative.
"Beginning in the fall of 1999, our freshmen engineering students will be required to use personal computers for their classes," he said. "This is an important part of preparing to meet the demands of the engineering job market."