Dear IEC Community,
I hope you are having a great summer and wishing you a productive Fall semester.
Over the past year, while the rest of us have been focusing on other critically important tasks like keeping our students engaged through ZOOM, WebEx and the like, IEC has been busy trying to better understand the needs of faculties and students at member institutions and showcase the research and educational capabilities of our departments. Recent requests from IEC to provide updated enrollment/graduation data and a single slide describing the research capabilities in your department are a continuation of these efforts. A forthcoming request to record a short and simple video introducing our department is another component of this initiative we hope will be wholeheartedly supported by all of us.
Mandoye Ndoye
Associate Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Tuskegee University
|
|
October 2021
IEC Catalyst Workshop: Making Better Engineers Through Social Justice
Virtual Workshop - Details coming soon!
January 19 & 20, 2022
EquiTECH 2022: Building Equitable Culture for Collaboration
In-Person, Annual Conference
Details coming soon!
|
|
John Kelly
Associate Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at North Carolina A&T State University
Member, Board of Directors, Inclusive Engineering Consortium
|
|
Digital Systems Community of Practice
Committed to collaborating as members of the IEC
Virtual Department
|
One of the central themes of the Inclusive Engineering Consortium is the concept of the “virtual department”. Many of our departments are of modest size and that does not allow us to achieve critical mass in our research or academic concentration areas. By working together, the faculty of the IEC can collaborate to accomplish things that are challenging as a single department. The Digital Systems Community of Practice is a group of scholars whose academic responsibilities include leadership of their department’s digital systems curriculum. Other similar communities are planned and will begin meeting soon. If you are interested in helping to develop a community for your area, we welcome your engagement. The Digital Systems Community of Practice has started and represents a promising structure for the future of IEC. The Digital Systems Community of Practice welcomes additional participants. If you are interested in participating, information about the next meeting is included below.
|
|
Kenneth A. Connor
Professor Emeritus, Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Member, Board of Directors, Inclusive Engineering Consortium
|
|
For this edition of Thinking Outside the Box, I have three questions. #1: Do you regularly incorporate software-based activities in your undergrad ECE courses? If so, what languages do you use? For a long time, I have been a big believer in developing activities that require my students to do at least some Matlab programming. I still believe that students should not graduate with a BS in electrical or computer engineering without knowing how to solve real engineering problems using Matlab. Unfortunately, universal access to this extraordinarily useful tool is not provided at all engineering schools. I did a quick check for the 18 ECE programs that make up IEC and found half have a site license and half do not. The ones with licenses do not necessarily provide access for faculty. Fortunately, there is a free alternative that works for nearly everything we need to do in at least core undergraduate courses. Octave works with nearly all m-files, although some require a little modification. I have been using the browser-based version at https://octave-online.net/ and find it works great. I encourage you to consider it. To get started, look at this simple intro from the Howard Math Department. http://www.cetla.howard.edu/workshops/docs/Introduction%20to%20MATLAB%202017.pdf
|
|
Have an interesting article, video, link that you'd like to share with our community? Share with us at info@iec.org
|
|
Miguel Velez-Reyes, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Texas at El Paso, was recognized as a Community Champion among the scientific community for his multitudinous contributions as a longtime member of SPIE, The International Society for Optics and Photonics.
|
|
Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) is the grateful recipient of $240,000 from Fluor Corporation, an engineering and construction firm headquartered in Irving, Texas. One of three Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) slated to receive funds in Fluor’s newly initiated $1 million Engineering Scholar Program for HBCUs, PVAMU will use the money to establish the HBCU Engineering Scholar Program and Global University Sponsorship Program (GUSP) in its Roy G. Perry College of Engineering.
|
|
Morgan State University’s (MSU) Cybersecurity Assurance and Policy (CAP) Center has been awarded a $3.2 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to implement the agency’s novel CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program at Morgan, providing 24 cybersecurity scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students. As the only HBCU recipient to be awarded the grant this year, Morgan joins six other universities distinguished by the NSF to administer the CyberCorps program at their respective institutions. The award, which carries a term of five years, recognizes MSU’s CAP Center as a leader in cyber defense education and the study of secure embedded systems. Kevin T. Kornegay, Ph.D., the director for the CAP Center and professor at Morgan, will serve as principal investigator.
|
|
 |
L3Harris Included in the 2021 Disability Equality Index (DEI) |
L3Harris has been included in the 2021 Disability Equality Index® (DEI) and recognized as one of the Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion. The DEI is the nation’s most comprehensive annual benchmarking tool, facilitated by leading not-for-profit organizations Disability:IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities. It serves as a roadmap of measurable, tangible actions companies can take to achieve disability inclusion and equality.
L3Harris was selected as a top DEI company for scoring above the global threshold established by Disability:IN. This reflects a high level of overall performance across the index’s five pillars: company culture and leadership, enterprise-wide access, employment practices, community engagement and supplier diversity.
Companies included in the 2021 DEI have provided a comprehensive look at how they advance disability inclusion across their businesses.
|
|
|
|
Today's Fight Against Climate Change is Happening in Space |
Interest and concern for climate change is not a new phenomenon – observations and warning signs were recorded more than 2,000 years ago.
History informs the future
It was Aristotle’s successor, Theophrastus, who was credited with making the first climate change observations. Dubbed the “father of botany,” Theophrastus witnessed marsh draining and forest clearing to make way for the burgeoning city of Athens. He theorized that changes to Athens’ natural environment directly contributed to the area becoming warmer, sparking a climate change conversation that is still as relevant today as it was in ancient times.
Over the centuries, scientists recorded climate change with the tools of their time, each generation building upon the discoveries of its predecessors. Today, gaining deep insights into the intricacies of climate change on a global level and its relationship to increasingly severe, life-threatening weather is a top priority for scientists.
|
|
|
|
Follow IEC on Social Media! |
|
Want to get involved? Participate, speak, sponsor! Opportunities available.
Contact Tymia Wilson at twilson@iec.org.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
