MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

Each year the College of Engineering at Wichita State University presents lectures by the foremost practitioners of the engineering profession to provide engineering students insight into the opportunities for service offered by the practice of engineering. The presentation by Ruth David, PhD, President and CEO, ANSER, is the twenty-first in the series.

The Sam Bloomfield Distinguished Engineer-in-Residence Lecture Series is an important part of the educational activities of the College of Engineering. Even though we are located in a metropolitan setting that serves as the center of engineering in this region of the country it is all too easy for us-engineering students and educators-to become so involved in the theoretical study of engineering that we may lose sight of the ultimate aim of engineering education: to provide well-educated men and women for the practice of engineering.

Engineering has an important role to play in the public policy making in today's increasingly technological society. The engineering community is responsible for translating the findings of fundamental scientific research into technical tools for widespread everyday use, not to mention contributions to fundamental research such as those of the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics, Jack Kilby, an electrical engineer, for the invention and development of the integrated circuit. The technological tools we help create require public policies and laws for their safe and beneficial use, and ethical questions raised and dilemmas posed by the safe and sound practice of engineering require answers and solutions.

This lecture series gives us the opportunity to bring some of the preeminent practicing engineers to the campus so that they might remind us in a formal way that the world of engineering is a very practical one that requires workable solutions to complex problems with public policy making implications and ethical ramifications.

We are pleased to share with our colleagues the thoughts of this year's distinguished engineer, Ruth David.

Dean Dennis A. Siginer, Ph.D, Sc.D
College of Engineering
Wichita State University

Related links:

	Sam Bloomfield , one of Wichita's aviation pioneers and a consummate engineer, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, 1907. more>>
	Ruth David, President and CEO of ANSER(Anlytical Systems, Inc.), went to work at the Sandia National Laboratory after earning the Bachelor of Science in Electrical engineering at WSU in 1975. more>>
PAST DISTINGUISHED ENGINEERS-IN-RESIDENCE
EXCERPTS FROM THE PUBLIC LECTURE OF 2001 DISTINGUISHED ENGINEER-IN-RESIDENCE DR. RUTH DAVID: Engineers, Homeland Defense, and Global Village The full text of the lecture can be obtained by writing to: The Dean's office College of Engineering 1845 Fairmount Wichita Kansas 67260-0044.