NSF Helps Fund NanoEngineering Education Initiatives by ECEDHA.

Business Editors

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 2003

The International Engineering Consortium has announced that the National Science Foundation will contribute financial support to a new professional education initiative from IEC partner the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA). The program, the NanoEngineering TecForum and NanoEngineering Education Workshop, will take place January 27-28, 2003, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif., where it will run concurrently with the IEC's highly popular DesignCon event.

The ECEDHA nanoengineering program will consist of two elements:

-- The NanoEngineering TecForum tutorial will give ECEDHA members and other current faculty the necessary grounding in the principles and prospects of this exciting new discipline.

-- The NanoEngineering Education Workshop will take as its tasks the introduction of nanoscience and engineering into undergraduate engineering programs, and the development of a framework of interdisciplinary nanoengineering graduate degree programs accessible to students from both the engineering and scientific disciplines.

The workshop will be chaired by Prof. Stephen Goodnick, Chairman of the EE Department at Arizona State University and a vice president of the ECEDHA. Jim Aylor, chair of ECE at the University of Virginia, Kenneth Jenkins, head of the EE department at Pennsylvania State University, and Barry Sullivan, director of content development at the IEC, will serve as co-chairs.

Presented annually by the IEC, DesignCon is the premier industry conference for the electrical and electronic engineering community, attracting more than 6,000 design engineers and managers, as well as prominent representatives of engineering's academic world. More information on the NanoEngineering TecForum and Education Workshop can be found at www.designcon.com/2003/nanotechnology.html.

ECEDHA advances the fields of electrical and computer engineering, providing a forum for electrical and engineering department heads to exchange information for improving the quality and effectiveness of engineering education. ECEDHA is composed of department heads of ABET-accredited electrical and/or computer engineering programs in the United States. Associate membership is open to non-U.S. department heads. More information on ECEDHA can be found at www.ECEDHA.org.

The IEC manages the affairs of ECEDHA, including administration, finance, annual meetings, publications, communications and special programs. The IEC is currently working with ECEDHA on initiatives that focus on the use of online learning to enhance engineering students' educational experience. More information about the IEC is available at www.iec.org.