This ongoing initiative provides students with real world examples of engineering principles in practice. All presentations are open to students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Free and open to the public. All lectures take place on Thursdays from 1:00-1:50 PM in Xerox Auditorium (Bldg. #9, Room 2580).

September 24, 2009
Richard Repka, BS Mechanical Engineering, ‘83
Commercialization Manager, Eastman Kodak

October 8, 2009
Dr. Johann Demmel, BS Industrial and Systems Engineering, ‘83
Sr. Manager of Systems Engineering, Raytheon Missile Systems

November 5, 2009
Bernard Schroeder, BS Industrial and Systems Engineering, ‘80
President, Lake Beverage

December 3, 2009
Gregory Kacprzynski, BS/MS, Mechanical Engineering, ‘97/02
Director of Engineering Services, Impact Technologies, LLC

January 21, 2010–(TENTATIVE)
David Alan Smith, BS Mechanical Engineering, ‘87
Partner, Accenture

February 11, 2010
Jeffrey Benck, BS Mechanical Engineering, ‘88
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Emulex Corporation

March 18, 2010
Bradley Fluke, BS Electrical Engineering, ‘84
CEO, Javelin Semiconductor, Inc.

April 15, 2010 TBD

For more information regarding the Dean's Alumni Speaker Series or any alumni events at the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, please contact Jasmine DiSalvo, Assistant Director of Development and Alumni Relations, at 585.475.5045 or jasdar@rit.edu . 

Industrial & Systems Engineering Students Garner National Recognition

Congratulations to the ISE student design team of José Gabriel Rodríguez, Rodrigo Velarde Gonzalez, Huseyin Zorba, and Desirae Gilbert on third place for their entry in the 2008-2009 Material Handling Student Design Competition. Thanks also to Dr. Andres Carrano for serving as the faculty advisor for the RIT team. The competition is open to both graduate and undergraduate students, but our team was comprised solely of undergraduate students.

Sponsored by the College Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE) and Keogh Consulting, the competition is based on an actual project. This year's case study focused on a facility design project for a major wholesale Third Party Logistics (3PL) company. The team was challenged with the goal to design a distribution center to service new business by utilizing an existing facility that is ready for final fit-out by the builder / developer. The 3PL Company focuses on wholesale business by supplying various goods for major retailers, ranging from general merchandise, health and beauty supplies, dairy, meat, produce and frozen products.

RIT Formula Team Takes First in Individual and Overall Events in California

After several years of top five placements in international competitions, the Rochester Institute of Technology SAE Formula racecar team took first place overall among 81 teams in the 2009 Collegiate Design Series California event on June 20. This was the first time the RIT team placed first overall on American soil and swept the individual categories in the weekend competition including endurance, acceleration and skid pad events.

The Formula SAE events are annual student design competitions where college students design and build a small Formula-style racecar. Each student team designs, builds and tests a prototype then enters the racecar in national and international events against other college teams.

The RIT Formula team has consistently placed in the top 10 of its competitions throughout its 17 years. The team enters three competitions yearly with two in the United States and one overseas.

In May 2009, the RIT Formula team placed second overall at Michigan International Speedway in Detroit. The California competition is the group's second of the season. RIT will compete again Aug. 5-9 at the HockenhelmRing in Baden-Wurttenberg, Germany.

For more information go to:

ttp://www.sae.org/servlets/pressRoom?OBJECT_TYPE=PressReleases&PAGE=showCDSNews&EVENT=FORMULA&RELEASE_ID=1050

EFFORT@RIT

NSF Grant PI Team: Margaret Bailey (KGCOE), Stefi Baum (COS), Sharon Mason (GCCIS), Jacqueline Mozrall (KGCOE), Maureen Valentine (CAST)

The National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation (IT) - Catalyst project, “Establishing the Foundation for Future Organizational Reform and Transformation @ RIT” (EFFORT@RIT) is a two-year study across five RIT colleges which include Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The PI team will analyze what factors women look for when seeking academic positions. The team in close collaboration with Human Resources will also look at how well RIT provides or does not provide for these factors by conducting a climate survey, objective data review, and benchmarking exercises. The goal of this institutional transformation catalyst project is to develop an evidence-based approach to indentify the barriers and address factors resulting in the under-representation of women in STEM faculty positions at RIT. Ultimately, the mission of the project is to increase the representation and advancement of women faculty in engineering and science at RIT.

The ADVANCE IT-Catalyst project will be led by a team of faculty with Margaret Bailey, Kate Gleason Chair and associate professor of mechanical engineering, as principal investigator; co-principal investigators on the team include Stefi Baum, Director of the Center for Imaging Science and professor (COS); Sharon Mason, Faculty Associate for Student Issues and associate professor (GCCIS); Jacqueline Mozrall, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department head and professor (KGCOE); and Maureen Valentine, Miller Professor and Vice Dean (CAST).

Through initiatives currently underway, from the Women in Engineering (WE@RIT) Program’s tremendous growth to President Destler’s launching of an Equity Scorecard program, RIT has gathered tremendous momentum to position itself for institutional change in regards to gender inclusiveness and equity within faculty ranks. The proposed NSF project will allow RIT to build upon this energy and accelerate the transformation process through careful data driven studies to better understand current position. This is the first year that NSF ADVANCE has funded the Institutional Transformation (IT) - Catalyst program and RIT is one of eleven universities from across the country to become an IT-Catalyst site.

Gender Diversity at KGCOE

At the Kate Gleason College of Engineering (KGCOE) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the only engineering college in the United States named in honor of a woman, young women are excited about engineering. 

Women at KGCOE are thriving, but that hasn't always been the case. At the beginning of the current decade, RIT's leadership recognized that although the college was named in honor of a woman, the percentage of enrolled women engineering students was below desired levels. In order to address this issue, Dean Harvey Palmer designated the inaugural Kate Gleason Endowed Chair position to attract a faculty member with an interest in improving gender diversity in engineering. When the chair's first appointee, Margaret Bailey, joined the faculty in 2003, she found a group of women, including Professors Jacqueline Mozrall and Elizabeth DeBartolo and Assistant Dean Margaret Anderson, who shared her passion and commitment to gender diversity. These women collaborated to form Women in Engineering at RIT—or WE@RIT ( we.rit.edu )—to increase the intensity with which KGCOE and RIT address issues related to gender.

WE@RIT aims to establish and enhance a “pipeline” of precollege and college programs that will ultimately increase the number of women engineers entering the workforce. Read more at:

http://www.aacu.org/ocww/volume37_2/feature.cfm?section=2 .

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