 Oregon is an amazing place to build an engineering program that will have a lasting impact on our future. Many of us native Oregonians remember the roadside signs that read: Keep Oregon Green. I saw that phrase so often while growing up that “Oregon” and “Green” became synonymous for me. Back then, Oregon was natural resource rich and technology poor. Today, we’re home to one of the greatest concentrations of technology industry in the nation, and we’re “green” at the same time. That blend of greenness and technology sets us apart from the rest of the world and gives this College the opportunity to develop the engineers and spin out the innovations that will make the future more prosperous for Oregonians and the world.
From sustainable development and new sources of clean energy, to advances in medical technology, civil infrastructure, and information technology, our students are learning to solve the most challenging global problems.
We’ve made great strides in our quest to increase our impact on innovation. Our community of faculty, staff, and students are advancing on many fronts – from researchers spinning out new companies to students doing amazing things.
The number one contribution we make is creating new engineers who enter the workforce ready to innovate – women and men who know the fundamentals, work well on teams, and have enough hands-on experience to understand their roles in helping organizations succeed in the global economy. Many of our student teams took top honors this year at international design competitions. One group is helping develop a $100 laptop computer for developing nations, and another is helping design heated clothing that played a role in OSU’s baseball team clinching its second consecutive NCAA Championship.
Learning and working in our unique culture of innovation and entrepreneurship is an advantage. Our research clusters are bearing fruit: more than a dozen ideas are moving from laboratory discoveries to spin-outs of new products and companies. A few examples include wind turbines that can be mounted on buildings , biological fuel cells that produce 10 times more electricity than previously thought possible, scanning systems that identify insects to ensure stream health, bleach replacements for the paper industry, smarter spreadsheet software, and a communication system for safer emergency C-sections.
All this work by these outstanding people translates into greater prosperity – in the broadest sense of that word – for everyone. We’ve even found a way to measure our impact on prosperity. It’s called “innovation capacity” and is a combination of delivering top engineering talent and creating powerful impact through research. Using this metric, we currently rank No. 40 among more than 300 U.S. engineering schools, up from No. 56 in 2000.
Thanks to our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends, we’re succeeding at building on our historic legacy of excellence to become one of the nation’s finest engineering programs. Thank you all for your ongoing involvement and support of our successes.
With best wishes,
Ron Adams, Dean of Engineering |
