Dr. Celal Batur

A brief history... As you may know, the College of Engineering was instituted with the Mechanical and Civil Engineering programs in 1914. The Electrical Engineering program joined four years later in 1918. Your department is now almost 90 years old and poised to challenge the future with new ideas and faculty. Profs. Kevin Hane, Xiaosheng Gao, Alex Povitsky and Jiang Zhe have joined us in the last three years and we are hiring one new faculty member this year to replace the retiring faculty. Profs. Benjamin T. F. Chung, Rudy Scavuzzo, Mike Savage, John Serafini, Joe Padovan, Mert Chu and B. P. Leonard all retired within the last six years. The most recent retiree is Prof. Richard Gross but the day after he retired in June 2001 we offered him an adjunct faculty contract so that he can continue on his outstanding work on senior design projects and excellent teaching.

Student success continues... The record over the past several years is among the best in the nation. The success of our students has established our department as a leader in the area of undergraduate student projects. The student chapter of ASME has been recognized as the best in North America and has won the prestigious Region V Bendix/Allied Signal/Ingersoll Rand Award for the outstanding student chapter for thirteen years. Our SAE formula car placed first in 1999 and the SAE Aero team was awarded the first place at the Aero Design Competition in 2002 and 2001,… 13 times since 1995. The Mini-Baja team has received the first position in the Midwest competition in 2002 and in the Midwest Competition in 2001. Our BattleBot team traveled to San Francisco to participate in the cable television program. Daniel Basch received the first SAE Rumbaugh Outstanding Student Leader Award in USA. Special recognition and thanks go to Profs. Richard Gross and Jerry Drummond for their leaderships on the SAE projects. On the professional side, our graduates consistently achieve high passing grades on the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. Historically your department has an average passing rate close to 90%.

Industrial Advisory Council... The Mechanical Engineering department established an advisory council in order to strengthen the relations between the industrial partners and the department. This council works under the leadership of Bob Liebensperger. The council advises the department on undergraduate education issues, industrial research and infrastructure development. They meet twice a year. The spring meeting coincides with the Departmental Design Show that we started in 2001. Here is the complete list of the Advisory Council members; you may see your friends in there:

1. Ron Kammer, VP Commercial Airline Sales, Aircraft Braking Systems Inc.
2. Bob Liebensperger, VP of Research Timken (retired).
3. Mark Brinkerhoff, President Laser Link Corp.
4. Craig Ferriot, Director of Mold Division, Ferriot Inc.
5. Samuel Belcher, Owner of Sabel Plastics.
6. Jeffrey Dickerhoof, Advanced Elastomer Systems.
7. Jerry Graf, Senior Project manager, Delphi Inc.
8. Kevin Herbert, Point One Design Ltd.
9. Steven LaBolt, President, Advanced Furnace Dynamics.
10. Norman Lewis, Consulting Engineer, GE.
11. Martin Mearhoff, Senior VP Babcok Borsig Service Group.
12. James Parish, Parish Enterprise.
13. Larry Schrader, Global Motion and Control Training Manager, Parker Hannifin Corporation.

We appreciate very much the Council's philanthropic contributions toward scholarship, laboratory development and educational tools as well as their careful monitoring of our programs.

Faculty success continues... Our faculty received prestigious research and teaching awards from both the Alumni Association and the College of Engineering. Prof. Benjamin T. F. Chung received the Outstanding Researcher Award, Prof. Richard Gross received the Outstanding Teacher Award, and Prof. Paul Lam received the Outstanding Alumni Award, all from the Alumni Association. Prof. Jerry Drummond received the Best Teacher Award from the College of Engineering. Prof. Xiaosheng Gao received the prestigious Young Investigator award of the Office of Naval Research in his first year at the Department. Four faculty members are the fellows of the ASME and four of our faculty serve as editors or associate editors in prestigious scientific journals. In addition to current teaching and research laboratories on vibration, control, tribology and materials, our new faculty have set-up their own research labs on smart materials, heat transfer, and two-phase flow.

Sincerely,
Celal Batur
Professor and Chairman
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Akron
AKRON – OHIO 44325 – 3903

batur@uakron.edu

Phone: 330 972 7367
Fax: 330 972 6027