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2012 Oregon Stater Engineering Awards
College of Engineering
Oregon State University
5
is vital to developing future leaders and
helping them gain access to opportunities.
So, while institutions all over the country
face economic uncertainties, Oregon State
is in the midst of an aggressive hiring
phase. By investing in our faculty, we can
maintain an Oregon State like many of
our honorees remember — an authentic
place where educators care about each
individual student.
As a testament to the strength of our
engineering programs, many of the
university’s new faculty positions are
allocated to the College of Engineering.
We’re in the midst of hiring 25 world-class
engineering faculty who offer diverse and
exciting research credentials and have
the ability to significantly enhance our
academic programs and facilitate stu-
dent learning. This is an unprecedented
growth rate for our program and will help
us toward our mission of developing solu-
tions to global challenges.
Our alumni and industry supporters
also play a critical role in helping us
to achieve our goals for our students.
Already, they have funded named faculty
positions and endowments, which are
key to recruiting top faculty and freeing
up resources to hire additional junior
faculty and help balance the student-to-
faculty ratio. The recently established Hal
Pritchett Chair is one example of alumni
and industry coming together to honor a
single inspiring professor who founded the
Construction Engineering Management
program at Oregon State. These alumni
understood the value of learning and the
role it played in their own success.
Making the leap to hire 25 new faculty
within a year may, to some, seem impru-
dent during a time of financial uncertainty.
But we strongly believe that it is essential
to help our students succeed. Success in
the classroom can lead to success in the
boardroom— or office, lab, plant, agency,
or nonprofit organization. Our new faculty
will join our existing faculty in instructing
and inspiring the next generation of inno-
vative leaders. They will supply the tools
and spark the curiosity to educate the
young minds who will one day build our
infrastructure, tackle our energy crisis,
and re-imagine what it means to be an
engineer.
I expect that one day we will honor
some of these students, much like we are
honoring 27 of our amazing alumni today.
If we do, I’m sure they will talk about the
professors who taught them how to be
a good engineer, and how they went on
to make people’s lives better in Oregon
and beyond. With the right investment in
recruiting and retaining top faculty talent,
we can make certain that today’s and
tomorrow’s Oregon State students continue
to be among the world’s top achievers.
Go Beavs!