Wireless Western featured at Montreal conference
June 10, 2002
KALAMAZOO -- Western Michigan University's wireless computing technology will get some international exposure June 16-19 when the University's president joins officials from its engineering college to make presentations at the annual conference of the nation's leading engineering education organization.
WMU President Elson S. Floyd will moderate a session on "Teaching and Learning with Technology" when the American Society for Engineering Education convenes in Montreal for the organization's annual conference and exposition. The session, which will focus on wireless developments in higher education, is set for Tuesday, June 18.
Dr. Hossein Mousavinezhad, chairperson of WMU's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is program chairperson of ASEE's Electrical and Computer Engineering Division. He says the annual conference is the major gathering for the nation's engineering educators and a chance for them to interact with government and industry officials as well as engineering professionals from other nations. More than 2,000 people are expected to attend the event.
"There are more than 300 engineering schools in the nation and this is the major gathering that gives engineering educators a chance to discuss the important issues they are all facing," says Mousavinezhad. Major issues under discussion this year, he says, include online education, the growth in the role of student researchers, the demand for hands-on experiences and schools' attempts to balance the speed of technological change with the need to impart basic engineering principles to students.
The technology session Floyd will lead will feature presentations by Dr. Laurence Wolfe, chief information officer of the National Institutes for Health; officials from the University of Illinois and the Georgia Institute for Technology; and three members of WMU's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences--Dr. Daniel Litynski, dean of the college; Dr. Dean Johnson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Dr. Bradley Bazuin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Litynski and his colleagues are expected to focus on the computing capabilities and wireless communication network that are part of WMU's new engineering complex now being constructed on the University's Parkview Campus.
Litynski also will moderate two sessions at the conference--one on undergraduate research and a second on precollege engineering education. Another WMU representative, Dr. Parviz Merati, chairperson of the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, will moderate a session on engineering design education.
Media contact: Cheryl Roland, 269 387-8400, cheryl.roland@wmich.edu