Vol. 1, No. 3 news-q497
his is the third issue of an alumni
newsletter we plan to publish quarterly
to tell you about your department and all
of the exciting new things that are taking
place. The second issue had a lengthy
discussion of the Klipsch School development,
and especially endowment. This issue provides
some more discussion of development with
respect to gift accounts. A section is devoted to
our new electrical engineering curriculum and
ABET 2000. Other sections discuss enrollment
trends, upgrading our PC laboratories, the
Manual J. Lujan Space Tele-Engineering
Program, and the annual fall Electrical and
Computer Engineering Academy (ECEA)
meeting.
The NMSU fall 1997 enrollment is up 2.5% and
the Klipsch School freshman enrollment is up
13% after several years of decline. The
undergraduate enrollment is up 0.5%, the
masters graduate enrollment is down 22%, but
the PhD enrollment is up 16%. The sharp decline
in masters enrollment is as expected due to the
strong job market. The increase in PhD
enrollment is due to the increased external
funding being developed by our new, young
faculty. The Klipsch School externally funded
research was about $2.5 million in FY 1996, $2.3
million in FY 1997, and is projected to be $2.6
million in FY 1998.
The Klipsch School undergraduate enrollment reached a high in 1987 at about 900 and declined to about 400 in 1996. We are not unique. Engineering enrollment is down nationwide. Funding has been tight at NMSU for several years because of declining enrollment. Consequently, faculty and staff positions that open due to resignations or retirement are being evaluated by an administrative committee to determine if they should be eliminated. This has really hurt the Klipsch School. The administration took away two Klipsch School faculty positions that opened during the 1996-97 academic year.
The principal reason for a downturn in the number
of high school students choosing to enter
electrical and computer engineering programs
has been the perception of a poor job market. In
the late 1980s, the job market started declining.
This decline became much steeper by 1991-92.
Massive corporate downsizing and a reduction of
government spending, especially in defense and
energy, triggered a recession that seriously
affected the ECE job market. High school
students are particularly sensitive to comments
about career prospects and they know very little
about the various disciplines in any given field.
When the ECE job prospects decline, so does the
freshman enrollment. When the recession ended
in 1995 the ECE job market recovered mainly
because excessive downsizing and retirement
created a shortage of engineers. Several areas,
like telecommunications, also started growing
rapidly at this time. Klipsch School graduates are
now receiving multiple, high paying, job offers and
the freshman enrollment is increasing. This trend
should continue upward for several years.
The job market affects graduate-level enrollment
in the opposite way. When job offers are scarce,
more students enter our graduate programs in
hopes of improving their marketability. This is
particularly true of the masters program where the
Klipsch School saw a steep increase in
enrollment of about 15% between 1991 and 1992.
When job offers improve, the MS program
declines, as we are seeing now, as mentioned
earlier. The PHD program usually follows this
trend to some extent, but is also sensitive to the
amount of funded research, and research
assistant positions available.
Even though the Klipsch School enrollment
declined for fall 1996, the freshman enrollment
increased. As discussed earlier, the freshman
enrollment also increased in fall 1997. We are
currently seeing a trough in junior/senior
enrollment, but we'll see a swell in two to three
years. What high school students, teachers,
councilors, and parents need to understand is
that even in poor economic times there will
continue to be a need for engineers and if a high
school student enters engineering during bad
economic times, at graduation four years later,
there will be an abundance of job offers. Klipsch
School graduates are currently in great demand,
with multiple job offers, and even signing
bonuses. Gary Daniels, retired senior vice
president of Motorola said in "Head for the Silicon
Hills," 1997 Motorola Semiconductor University
Symposium, Austin, Texas, this past summer that
engineering enrollment has declined 15%
nationwide and Motorola sees a 25% increase in
their engineering jobs.
We hope you had a chance to read the
discussion of the Klipsch School Development. In
that discussion we spent a great deal of time
discussing the need for development, and
especially endowment. The College of
Engineering is moving into its annual giving
campaign and you will probably receive a letter
from the Klipsch School seeking your support.
We hope last quarter's KlipschSpeaker provided
you with a good understanding of our various
endowments and their uses. The Klipsch School
also has a number of gift accounts. Gift accounts
can also be designated for specific purposes, but
all of the money can be spent, as opposed to
endowments in which only a portion of the
interest can be spent each year. The Klipsch
School currently has the following gift accounts:
Dr. Louis and Jane Kazda Electrical Engineering Scholarship
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Gift
Tom Banks Memorial Electrical Engineering Library
Electrical and Computer Engineering Lab Equipment
Electrical Utility Management/NMSU Gift
Electrical Utility Management/Fund Gift
LINUX Laboratory
Electrical and Computer Engineering Scholarship
Hartwell Memorial Scholarship
If you want to support any of these, write the
name of the account on your check and make
your check payable to the Klipsch School of
Electrical and Computer Engineering. Mail your
check to Dr. Jay B. Jordan, Head, Klipsch School
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Box
30001, MSC 3-0, New Mexico State University,
Las Cruces, NM 88003. If you want to create
your own gift account, contact Dr. Jordan.
During the summer, through $37,000 of generous
support from alumni and friends, the Klipsch
School upgraded 38 PCs in three student PC
clusters to AMD K6 -200Mhz systems with 32 MB
of RAM memory , new high-speed/performance
video cards, monitors, and printers. Through
client-server networking, these systems are
capable of remote boot to DOS, Windows, or
LINUX, a PC version of UNIX, operating systems.
UNIX is now introduced in our freshman course
EE 162 Computer Engineering I. We are seeing
greater use of software tools such as Scientific
Workplace, MATLAB, MAPLE, PSPICE, and
B2logic for the solution of homework and design
problems. Netscape is also included so that
students can access the World Wide Web. Many
professors are placing course materials on the
Internet. In EE 313 Networks III, lecture notes,
homework assignments, and solutions are all at
the course's web site. In fact, tool-based solutions
are becoming more pervasive. The math
department now requires all students to have
graphic calculators starting with trigonometry and
college algebra. Wouldn't that have been nice
when we took those courses?
The last major revision to the Klipsch School's BSEE curriculum occurred over 20 years ago. In the interim the faculty have talked about changes, but the employers of our graduates are always very positive about the basic content of our program. With the acquisition of a number of young faculty, the retirement of senior faculty, and the new ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 requirements, it seemed appropriate to take another look at curriculum revision during the 1996-97 academic year.
Curriculum revision is like tackling the federal
budget; there are so many entitlements locked in
that there is very little room to maneuver. In our
case we have to comply with ABET, university,
and state requirements. ABET requires 32 credits
of math and science and 48 credits of
engineering. NMSU requires a minimum of 128
credits, of which at least 55 must be upper
division. The state requires 7 credits of English,
6 credits of critical thinking, and 18 of humanities
and social sciences. To contain the rising cost of
college education, the state may impose an upper
limit of 128 credits for four-year programs. This
last requirement is especially tough for
engineering programs which historically have
required 136 -142 credits for the BS degree. Add
to this a constant struggle with the desire to add
courses which present new material while
keeping the old courses intact. An example of
this is the emergence of computer engineering
and software engineering in the Klipsch School.
How do we start new, important programs with
limited resources and the constraints discussed
above?
To start the curriculum revision, the faculty of the
Klipsch School determined that our BSEE
graduates should be critical thinkers, problem
solvers, and life-long learners with the self-confidence to move into the unknown.
Specifically we wanted our graduates to be:
1. Well-grounded in mathematics and the
physical sciences. (In reading a draft of this,
Professor Howard Smolleck dryly noted that to
an EE, "well-grounded" implies zero potential,
and we don't want to imply that.)
2. Able to:
3. Professionals who:
An additional constraint is the still fluid requirements of the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000. We will have to show our graduates meet these requirments in our next accreditation visit. The following are likely to appear:
ABET for many years has been criticized for a
"bean counting" attitude. Criteria 2000 is an
attempt to move to a more qualitative, less
constrained evaluation of engineering programs.
But, it moves more of the burden of proof
regarding the quality of our program onto us.
The BSEE curriculum can be divided into four main categories: Math and Science, Engineering (other than electrical and computer engineering), General Education, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The electrical and computer engineering portion of the new curriculum includes the following:
EE 161 Computer Engineering I
EE 211 AC Circuits
EE 221 Electronics I
EE 261 Computer Engineering II
EE 311 Signals and Systems
EE 315 Electromagnetics I *
EE 332 Introduction to Electrical Power Engineering *
EE 341 Systems I *
* -- Courses in old curriculum --
The Klipsch School agrees with many
engineering faculties nationwide in requiring a
Capstone Design Course as the culmination of
the undergraduate curriculum. Such a course
provides an opportunity for students to integrate
the often disconnected knowledge acquired in
their previous engineering courses, and apply
their abilities to a realistic engineering problem.
Unlike other engineering schools, which often
have a single capstone course which varies from
year to year, the Klipsch School offers distinct
capstone courses for several specialty areas.
This approach has great success with industrial
managers who eagerly await each new class of
graduates from our longest-running capstone
courses, such as EE 467 - High-Performance
Computer Design. As our capstone offerings
continue to evolve, we anticipate several new
inter-disciplinary courses, such as a Robotics
course that brings together electrical and
computer engineering students with control
systems, power, and electronics background and
mechanical engineering students. As you alumni
know, the joy of engineering is building things that
work. Students find great satisfaction and self-confidence when they've proven that they are
competent engineers and companies look forward
to hiring them.
The first two courses, EE 111 and EE 161 are being taught for the first time this fall under the old numbers EE 201 and EE 162.
The Space Tele-Engineering Program has been
operating within the Klipsch School since 1990.
Manual Lujan's name was chosen because he
was a congressman from New Mexico and former
Secretary of the Interior. While in congress, he
was a major NASA supporter on the committees
overseeing NASA's budget. When the initial
NASA grant funding was awarded, NASA
honored Lujan by naming the Center after him.
The mission of the program is to provide an
environment to develop students for the
telemetering and telecommunications industry, to
provide academic programs on and off campus,
and to provide faculty and student research
facilities. The emphasis of the program is in the
Klipsch School's communications, signal
processing, and telemetry specialty area.
Associated with the program is the Telemetering
and Telecommunications Chaired Professorship -
the first faculty chair in the Klipsch School and the
College of Engineering. The funding for the chair
came from a combination of support provided by
the State of New Mexico, the International
Foundation for Telemetering, industry donors,
alumni and friends.
Frank Carden was the first Director and
Telemetering Chair Professor. He held that
position until 1993 when he retired. Dr. William
Osborne followed as second Director in 1990,
becoming the Telemetering Chair Professor in
1993. Dr. Osborne left in 1995 to become Dean of
Engineering at the University of Texas in Dallas.
Dr. Stephen Horan is the current Director and
Telemetering Chair Professor. Dr. William Ryan
is the Associate Director. Other Program faculty
are Dr. Philip DeLeón and Dr. James LeBlanc.
The International Foundation for Telemetering
(IFT) looks to the Klipsch School and the Space
Tele-Engineering Program to develop a Center of
Excellence in telemetering and
telecommunications. The IFT's largest support
has been the funding of the Chair. The IFT also
supports students via an endowed scholarship
program that awards three scholarships to
electrical engineering students and one to
computer science students. The current electrical
engineering scholarship holders are Kirk Morrow,
Julio Castro, and Ming-Hong Chen. The next
round of scholarship winners will be announced in
October at the International Telemetering
Conference (ITC) in Las Vegas. The Space Tele-Engineering Program reciprocates support to the
IFT in several ways. Both Drs. Carden and Horan
have taught telemetering short courses at the
ITC. Dr. Horan is the 1997 ITC technical program
chairman , Dr. Sheila Horan will be teaching a
short course, and Drs. Ryan and LeBlanc will be
session chairs.
The academic program reaches students on the
NMSU campus and through distance education.
The undergraduate classes include senior-level
classes in communications and signal processing.
This year initiates a senior-level design class
called "payload design" where students work on
the design of a space shuttle hitchhiker payload.
The graduate-level classes include random
processes, digital communications, source
coding, channel coding, detection theory, digital
signal processing (DSP), real-time DSP, and
telemetry systems. New classes are being
developed in personal communications systems,
linear systems, multi-dimensional signal
processing, adaptive signal processing, and
advanced DSP. Classes in random processes,
satellite communications, and telemetering
systems have been distributed through the
distance education program.
The Space Tele-Engineering Program started an
academic laboratory development initiative this
past year. Motorola donated a number of digital
signal processing development systems for use in
the real-time DSP classes. Tektronix donated a
state-of-the-art digital oscilloscope to the real-time
DSP laboratory. The IFT made an equipment
donation allowing the acquisition of computers,
radio equipment, and LabView software for use in
communications, signal processing, and
telemetering classes. Analytical Graphics
provided copies of the Satellite Tool Kit simulation
software for use in the satellite communications
class. Terametrix International donated a number
of telemetry processing units for use in the
telemetering class.
Research projects are conducted in the Center for
Space Telemetering and Telecommunications
Systems. Supporting the faculty and students are
Janice Apodaca, secretary, and Lawrence
Alvarez, engineer. The largest research projects
are funded by NASA and are in support of space
communications. These projects include error
correcting coding for space data links, radio
propagation effects, improved space operations,
equalization, and signal processing applied to
satellite data links. Other research support
comes from the National Science Foundation,
Sandia National Laboratories, the IFT, and the Air
Force. The laboratory has both hardware
development and software simulation capabilities.
External Program support has been averaging
about one-million dollars annually. Recent
graduates have been recruited by major
corporations including Hughes, Lockheed-Martin,
Motorola, Raytheon, Stanford
Telecommunications, and Texas Instruments.
For more information, visit the Space Tele-Engineering Program web site:
http://telsat.nmsu.edu/~telemetry/
The Electrical and Computer Engineering
Academy (ECEA) will hold their annual meeting at
the Klipsch School during October 22-23, 1997.
The Academy's Industrial Advisory Group (IAG)
will meet on October 22. The agenda includes
discussion of the Klipsch School downsizing, the
Klipsch School's long range plan, and the ABET
2000 curriculum review. The Academy will meet
in the Klipsch School on October 23. The
meeting will include election of new members, an
Industrial Advisory Group briefing, a discussion of
NMSU's Strategic Planning Process, and
induction of new members. The ECEA Banquet
will be held at Picacho Hills Country Club that
evening.
Information on the Academy including current
membership with biographies, bylaws, eligibility
for membership, etc. can be found in the Klipsch
School homepage at http://www.ece.nmsu.edu/
ecea/ecea.html. If you are interested in knowing
more about the Academy, becoming a member,
or wish to nominate someone, let us know. We
will fax or mail the requested information to you.
Dr. Sheila Horan, College Assistant Professor, has
assumed the duties of Freshman Advisor. The
Freshman Advisor helps integrate new students into
New Mexico State University by providing
assistance in course selection, math and English
placement, scholarships, and access to various
NMSU programs. Mr. A. K. Peterson, College
Instructor, has assumed the duties of Senior
Advisor. The Senior Advisor does the 60-hour, 90-hour, and final record checks. He makes sure the
students stay on track toward graduation.
Klipsch School alumni Dr. Kim Dalton Linder (BSEE
1988, MSEE 1991, and PhD-ME 1995) and Jim
Creager (BSEE 1968), both engineers with Allied
Signal, recently received an award from the Federal
Laboratory Consortium for Excellence in technology
transfer. The award was for developing a system
which scans microscope slides, and identifies karnal
bunt spores (a fungus on wheat) using image
processing and artificial intelligence techniques. To
quote Kim: "I just thought it was great to be working
with a former NMSU engineering student, who is
very respected here at Allied Signal, and then to be
on a team with him and win a Federal award shows
NMSU engineering grads are making their marks all
throughout time!"
Donald Sandoval (BSEE NMSU 1988, PhD-ME
University of Washington) was recently selected
Most Promising Scientist in the 10th annual Hispanic
Engineer National Achievement Awards sponsored
by Hispanic Engineer Magazine. The magazine's
criteria for the award is "a professional scientist or
engineer with fewer that five years of experience
and whose early technical accomplishments hold
great promise for the future." Dr. Sandoval
competed with about 60 nominees nationwide.
Sandoval is employed by Los Alamos National
Laboratory's Nuclear and Hydrodynamic
Applications Group. The September 8, 1997 issue
of High Performance Computing and
Communications Week said the following about
Sandoval's achievements in art. "Sandoval's art
also has earned awards. Textiles he has produced
have been recognized in [Santa Fe's annual]
Spanish Market over the years, receiving the
Excellence in Rio Grande Textiles and the Jake O.
Trujillo Award for Excellence in Weaving. He also is
a santero, or a carver of wooden saints, and
received the William Field Design Award, normally
given for innovative design in santero art."
We now have the KlipschSpeaker on our web
site. Locate http://www.ece.nmsu.edu/alumni/
alumni. html, select KlipschSpeaker and bring up
the issue you want.
After a year of study, investigation and review, a
review draft of NMSU's Strategic Plan: 1998 -
2002 was released to the public on Wednesday,
October 1. The Strategic Planning Committee
will now receive comments for the next month
before publishing the final version. The Klipsch
School's Steven Castillo has been extremely
busy this past academic year as a committee
member and co-chair of the Academic Programs
Subcommittee. Steve's committee reviewed all
of NMSU's 57 academic programs. The
preliminary draft has been put on NMSU's web
site at http://www.nmsu.edu/Strategic/plan/ stra-tegic_plan.html.
Part of the process of starting the quarterly
KlipschSpeaker is the development of an
accurate, up-to-date alumni database. We get
our mailing labels from the NMSU Alumni
Association, but we know there are Klipsch
School alumni who are not members of the
NMSU Alumni Association. We want to put
these alumni in a Klipsch School database, but
we don't know how to find them. Please send us
addresses of alumni not receiving the
KlipschSpeaker. We've mentioned an Alumni
Directory at our web site in previous editions of
KlipschSpeaker. The Alumni Directory page is
presently not available due to restructuring.
We'll let you know when it becomes available.
We can also provide the KlipschSpeaker as an
attachment to an E-mail message for those
alumni who prefer electronic service. This may
be especially attractive to foreign alumni. If you
want E-mail delivery, send your name and email
address to jtaylor@nmsu.edu. Indicate any
special requirements. Since this may take
several attempts to get it right, we'll keep mailing
the KlipschSpeaker in the conventional way
until you tell us that the E-mail method is
successful.
If you haven't already, please check the Klipsch
School's web page at http://ece.nmsu.edu. Our
web page tells about the Klipsch School
students, faculty, programs, and research. Look
us up. The NMSU web page address is
http://www.nmsu.edu. You can get to our web
page from NMSU's or directly at the address
above. The University has a calendar of events
web page at http://www.nmsu.
edu/general/calendar. If you want to get in touch
with us, obtain additional information, or tell us
something about you or other alumni, contact the
Klipsch School Head, Dr. Jay Jordan at 505-646-3115 or E-mail to jjordan@nmsu. edu, or Dr.
Javin Taylor, Associate Head and
KlipschSpeaker editor at 505-646-1239 or E-mail to jtaylor@ nmsu.edu. Or use the Klipsch
School fax number, 505-646-1435.
Vol. 1, No. 3 newsq.497
Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003