The department of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University enjoys strong support from the university and the college in fulfilling its mission and serving its students.
After taking the helm in the summer of 1995, the college administration under the leadership of Dean Melsa has instituted a de-centralized management system allowing each department to set, for the most part, their academic, administrative and fiscal priorities. The relationship between the college and the departments is also based on openness, honesty and trust as it is articulated in the "Organizational Leadership Principles" section of the "Blueprint for Excellence." In particular, the section dealing with the departments and departmental leadership reads;
"The college will actively seek ways to decentralize control in the College and put as much decision-making power as possible into the hands of people who are in touch with the problem. Department executive Officers will become a team focused on global optimization of all college activities. Real empowerment will be given to faculty and staff with the expectation that they will understand and accept the responsibility that such empowerment entails."
The MSE department executive officer, faculty and staff are committed to implementation of the same principles within the department.
In this section:
- Process for Determining the Budget for the Program
- Adequacy of Institutional Support and Financial Resources
- Faculty Professional Development:
- Resources for Facilities and Equipment:
- Personnel and Institutional Services:
Process for Determining the Budget for the Program
Every year in February, the departments are asked to make a presentation to the whole academic council, allowing each DEO to hear what are the accomplishments, priorities and needs of each academic and support unit in the college. Budget allocations are based on a number of factors including student enrollment, progress made toward college performance objectives, and new initiatives to achieve these objectives.
Adequacy of Institutional Support and Financial Resources
Institutional support for the department was excellent in the last five years. The departmental budget has seen a 50% increase since the last ABET visit from approximately $1.4M in 1995 to $2.15M in 2000. Most of this increase was used toward new faculty hires especially in the Metallic Materials, Polymeric Materials and Electronic Materials areas. During the same period the total FTE in the department increased approximately 37% from 13.08 FTE in 1995 to 17.87. On a head-count basis, the number of budgeted faculty increased from 17 to 22, about 30%. In addition, significant investments have been made toward establishing undergraduate laboratories in polymeric and electronic materials areas as well as updating and renewing equipment for other areas. At the present time, all the undergraduate teaching laboratories are in excellent condition. Future plans include adding more equipment in the polymer fabrication and characterization area when the new building becomes available in 2003.
Faculty Professional Development
Faculty professional development is highly encouraged both at the university level and the department level. A number of opportunities exist at the college and university level to attend conferences, workshops and training sessions on various aspects of teaching activity including, information technology, teaching effectiveness, distance education as well as specific programs like "Study in Second a Discipline" and "Faculty Improvement Leave." Recently, the college of engineering has been encouraging and arranging opportunities for faculty to have an industrial experience. Performance coaching is key to faculty development as discussed in B5.
A significant portion of the faculty development funds at the departmental level is reserved for new faculty appointments. Within the start-up package, the faculty member has freedom to choose his/her development activity. The department also encourages faculty to participate in workshops on effective teaching, proposal writing, and others offered on the campus by the institution.
Resources for Facilities and Equipment:
As is evident from Section B6, the laboratory facilities for undergraduate education in the MSE department are excellent. We have been able to provide our students with state-of-the art instruments. It is worth noting that the SEM facility is one of the first in the nation to allow multi user-interactive control system. This allows the students to actually run the SEM rather than have it demonstrated to them. Similarly, our students run the state-of-the art XRD and Thermal analysis equipment in the undergraduate laboratories.
A number of these instruments were acquired by grants from funding agencies, or manufacturers with significant cost sharing by ISU. This has been a tradition with the university and likely to continue in the future. In addition, a number of research instruments are also available for undergraduate teaching labs. The department is committed to updating and maintaining these instruments. Some instruments are under service contract. Other instruments are being kept up by either service calls when needed or by university’s technicians for minor problems. The department employs a mechanical technologist who assists in maintaining and repairing all but few instruments in the department.
Over the last couple of years, the department has spent over $100K/yr for equipment purchases and approximately $15K/yr for service contracts and repairs. With the college support these levels of expenditures are likely to continue for a couple of years more, in particular in the area of electronic materials and polymeric materials. Table 5 Support Expenditures for Materials Engineering appears in Appendix I.
Although the quality of our physical facilities is good, certainly the quantity is less than desirable. It is fair to say that the department is bursting at its seams with respect to space. Unfortunately there is no simple, immediate solution to the problem. However, the problem will be alleviated when the second phase of the Engineering Research and Teaching Complex, Hoover Hall is completed in three years. The MSE department will occupy a significant portion of the Hoover Hall and its availability will solve the space problem for the foreseeable future.
Personnel and Institutional Services:
The personnel for achieving the program objectives can be considered at two levels: departmental and institutional. The department employs one administrative specialist, two secretaries and one technician to support the academic personnel and students. The department also supports approximately 0.5 -time secretary within the Ames Laboratory system to provide support for the faculty who are housed in the Ames Lab physical facilities. In addition several undergraduate students are employed as hourly workers to assist office operations as well as maintaining the computer network and departmental web site. The support provided for the computing environment for the department is derived from a special computer fee, and it provides excellent support for updating and maintaining computers for the department. At the institutional level, the college maintains a computing service unit that also helps the departments when needed. The college also has a number of support units for achieving program objectives. These include but not limited to Engineering Career Services, Engineering Undergraduate Programs, and Engineering Publications and Communications Services.
