Dear Editor:
Student Life needs to calm down and recognize that Dean Sansalone is not the enemy (“Dean Sansalone: tear down this wall,” Oct. 23, 2006). On the contrary, she is an extremely talented academic leader, who has taken on the challenge of moving the School of Engineering into the top ranks, and we are very fortunate to have her as our dean. She has been tackling this challenge with a wide-ranging vision, a clear-sighted assessment of what’s working well and what isn’t and she has brought tremendous energy and dedication to the task. She has spent countless hours meeting with faculty, students and staff and has worked hard to understand their concerns and share her vision for the school.
While institutional change can be unsettling, we all need to understand that in a field as dynamic as engineering, continuous change comes with the territory. If we are to keep up with our peers and move the institution forward, we need to be constantly reevaluating what we do. As faculty, we need to be thinking about how the curriculum must change to meet the evolving needs of society and the career aspirations of our students.
We need to be looking for new research opportunities and trying to understand where to direct our efforts to have the greatest impact on our fields and peoples’ lives. And we need to be prepared to reorganize ourselves and adjust the way we do things in order to better address the larger objectives of the institution. While the resulting changes in departmental structures and administrative operations may be unsettling, we have to be prepared to make such changes in order to move ahead.
These are exciting times for the School of Engineering. There is a great deal that needs to be done in order to move the school into the top ranks, but in Dean Sansalone, we have a leader who relishes the challenge and recognizes the tremendous opportunities that lie before us. She enjoys broad support from the university administration, and all who have met with her and worked with her on issues recognize that she is a leader of tremendous energy, uncompromising integrity and outstanding administrative ability.
While not everyone will agree with every change that takes place over the next few years, I am confident that five to ten years from now, we will look back on this period as one of the most dynamic, creative and productive times in the history of the school, and I very much look forward to being a part of it.
-Jon Turner,
Barb J. & Jerome R. Cox, Jr. Professor of Computer Science
Campus card not quite successful
Dear Editor:
In your staff editorial on Wednesday, you assert that the campus card implementation in laundry machines is a success. Well, it’s mostly a success, but in Rosedale, we are still using quarters. There is a box on the wall that looks like it is supposed to accept our cards, but it is not hooked up to anything, and it displays a blank screen.
I e-mailed ResLife in September asking when they planned to get the system up and running in Rosedale, and they responded only that they were working on it. Nearly a month later, nothing.
So, not quite a success.
-Derek Dohler
Class of 2007