Subject: Ole Miss Civil Engineering
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:13:26 -0600
Organization:
Dear Alumni and Friends of Ole Miss Civil Engineering,
By this email I would like to establish occasional contact with you. (If you
do not want to receive email of this kind in the future, please reply to the
address at the header acheng@olemiss.edu and I will take your email address
off.)
If you are an Ole Miss Civil Engineering alumnus, you should have received
our annual Newsletter, sent about 3 weeks ago. If you have not, we have an
online version for you to access at:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/civil_eng/newsletter3.pdf
If your email tool functions properly, you only need to click the above URL
address to access it.
If we have just sent you our Newsletter, why am I writing you? Well,
Newsletter is published once a year, but exciting things happen year-round.
There is already good news that did not make it to the Newsletter. I would
like to share with you from time to time what is going on in the department.
The first good news is: Some time in December MDOT (Mississippi Department
of Transportation) gave CE students two scholarships. This event was widely
publicized. As far as we know,
more than a dozen newspapers in
and in
Sun-Herald, and several TV stations broadcasted this news. It even made to
the AP national wire service. When we are frustrated by comments like "What?
I don't know Ole Miss has engineering," this publicity certainly helps.
If you did not read it in the newspaper, you may wonder what this is about.
In a nutshell: two students will be selected each year to receive
scholarship of $10,000/yr to pursue undergraduate or $15,000/yr to pursue
graduate degrees. In fact, students are hired by MDOT and starting to
receive health and retirement benefit at the time of selection. They work at
MDOT for summer intern. When they graduate, they need to work for MDOT for
minimum 2 years with starting salary around 40K.
Why is this opportunity attractive? Students and parents often inquire about
Co-Op opportunities. This is better than Co-Op. In Co-Op, you work for a
company in hope that it will hire you when you graduate. In the MDOT
scholarship, you are hired upfront! And it pays you to go to school!
I should mention that you alums helped a lot in Ole Miss getting this
scholarship. Gorman Schaffer, Joy Portera, and other friends and alums had
spoken for us in different occasions. We truly appreciate your support! To
learn more detail about this scholarship, you can click on this link:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/civil_eng/mdot_news.pdf.
The second good news (actually it is the First) I have somewhat mentioned in
the Newsletter: The undergraduate enrollment is up! At the moment I counted
121 undergraduate students (see the listing at:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/civil_eng/undergrad.html). This is 30% more
than last year's number at 91. We have a freshman class of more than 40
students.
I am also glad to report that students are exercising great leadership in
organizing the 2004 ASCE Deep South Regional Conference in which more than
300 civil engineering students from 14 universities will arrive on campus to
compete in events like concrete canoe racing, steel bridge construction,
etc. Students want to host a great event to showcase Ole Miss, so they set
an ambitious goal of raising $20,000 to sponsor the conference. They are now
about one-third to the goal. If you are interested in more detail about this
conference, you can check the student web site:
http://www.olemiss.edu/orgs/asce/conference/ . If you are interested in
helping (and we do need help), you can access this document:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/civil_eng/deepsouth.pdf .
Not to burden you with too much news on our first contact, let me just
mention one more event: undergraduate curriculum revision toward a
leadership-based engineering education. In 2002 we started a new curriculum
in which we added courses like Engineering Economics, Construction
Management, Leadership and Professionalism, Introduction to Civil
Engineering I & II. We are in the process of making the second revision by
adding Business and Professional Speech and Engineering Fundamentals (for
the preparation of the FE/EIT exam) to the curriculum. There are a lot more
details. If you are interested, you can have a look of the proposed
curriculum at: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/civil_eng/curriculum-2004.pdf .
Your comment is welcome.
I am signing off here. If you are interested in staying in touch, please
feel free to drop me an email. You are welcome to drop in for a visit, to
meet with students, to speak in class sharing your experience, to meet with
your old professors (yes, they are still around!).
Best wishes,
Alexander H.-D. Cheng
Professor and Chair
Department of Civil Engineering
Tel: 662-915-5362
Fax: 662-915-5523
Email: acheng@olemiss.edu
URL: http://www.olemiss.edu/~acheng/
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/civil_eng/