Geoffrey Orsak | |
---|---|
Born | Geoffrey Charles Orsak May 26, 1963 Schenectady, New York, U.S. |
Spouse | Catherine Bohnert Orsak [1] |
Children | 2 |
Academic background | |
Education | Rice University B.S., M.S., PhD. (all in Electrical Engineering (E.E.) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Electrical Engineer,Engineering Educator |
Institutions | George Mason University,Southern Methodist University,Tulsa University |
Geoffrey Charles Orsak (born May 26,1963) [2] is a native of Schenectady,New York who went to Houston and entered Rice University,where he earned BS,MS and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering. After earning his doctorate in 1989,He joined George Mason University to teach electrical engineering as an Assistant Professor. In 1997,he moved to Dallas,and joined the faculty at Southern Methodist University (SMU) as Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In March 2004,he was named Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at SMU. In 2012,he accepted an offer to become the 18th president of the University of Tulsa in Tulsa,Oklahoma. [3] However,he was abruptly terminated,with no public explanation,only 77 days later.
Orsak was born in Schenectady,New York. He grew up in Corpus Christi,Laredo,and San Antonio,Texas. He attended Rice University where he earned his BSEE (’85),MEE (’86) and PhD (’90) degrees. [4] While at Rice,he was elected president of Will Rice College,one of the Rice's residential colleges.
Orsak began his academic career at George Mason University where he reached the level of associate professor. While there he served for a year as a Presidential Fellow,assisting the president and other senior staff with key strategic issues. He received one grant in 1991-2 of $19,102 from the National Science Foundation for a project titled "Efficient Algorithms for the Design of Systems with non-Gaussian Inputs." [5]
In 1997,he left GMU for Southern Methodist University (SMU),where he was hired as an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He became Associate Dean for Research and Development in May,2001 and Professor of Electrical Engineering,and in March 2004,he was named dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science,which during his tenure was renamed the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering. [6]
Early in his career at SMU,Orsak began taking a critical look at the condition of engineering in the United States. He noticed that in his major field (electrical engineering (EE)) by comparing enrollments over time. On a nationwide basis,American universities and colleges had graduated nearly 25,000 EEs in 1987,but by 2000,the number of graduates had fallen to 12,600. Considering all branches of engineering,he concluded that the number of graduating engineers had fallen from 450,000 in 1982 to about 350,000 in 2000. He gave a detailed analysis of his conclusions in a guest editorial to the professional journal of the Institute for Engineering Education at SMU in 2003. [7] [lower-alpha 1] He concluded that the country's traditional approach to technical and scientific education was unsuitable,if it wished to meet its domestic policy goals and also maintain a leading position in technology.
He established the Lyle School's first partnership with Lockheed Martin to provide the school's students with design and prototyping experiences using innovative team techniques to solve problems. He was also credited with setting up three centers and institutes:
After serving SMU as a dean for eight years,Orsak was appointed as the 18th president of the University of Tulsa (TU),replacing Steadman Upham,who had already announced his retirement. The appointment was announced on May 2,2012,and became effective July 1,2012, [8]
Orsak was released as Tulsa's president on September 12,2012. After serving only 74 days as President,the university announced that he had been removed,effective immediately,and simultaneously said that Executive Vice President Kevan Buck would "...manage day-to-day operations." [8] A reason for the change was not given. [9] Orsak expressed his disappointment about the board's decision to fire him after such a brief time as President. [10]
After his abrupt departure from Tulsa University,Orsak returned to Dallas,where he began to revive his stalled career in education,He was soon recruited as the Executive Director of the Texas Research Alliance (TRA),a non-profit effort to strengthen the research profiles of universities in north Texas. He had been a long-time supporter of STEAM education, [lower-alpha 2] In 1999,he was involved in promoting the Infinity Project,which was intended to increase student interest in engineering. [lower-alpha 3]
Orsak was an early advocate for including engineering in the K-12 curriculum. With the support of Texas Instruments,in 1999 he launched the Infinity Project to promote engineering and innovation education. [lower-alpha 4] and female enrollment in the Lyle School of Engineering has consistently been 50% higher than the national average. [14] [15]
Orsak received the first award as Educator of the Year in Engineering and Science from EE Times in 2006,after joining SMU's School of Engineering. [16] He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2005,the highest recognition afforded by the electrical engineering profession. [17] for leadership in the creation and deployment of engineering curricula technology for pre-college engineering education [18] . He was also named a "Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE" for his work in education and wireless communications.[ citation needed ] He has served on a number of public councils and task forces,including the National Petroleum Council. [19] Chairman of the Board of the Da Vinci School,and invited to address congress on a number of occasions. He was author of a monthly column for the international magazine "Design News" from June 2008 through April 2012. He has also appeared in numerous stories in the media on education and innovation in sources such as USA Today,Discovery Channel,MSNBC,CBS Early Show,AIArchitect,Austin American Statesmen and Dallas Morning News. In 2011,Orsak received the "SMU M Award," the university's highest award. [20]
Orsak is married to Catherine Cecil Orsak,who is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. They have two children,Mary Orsak,and Peter Orsak. His father was Charles "Chuck" E. Orsak. [lower-alpha 5]
Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American electrical engineer who took part in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on December 10, 2000. Kilby was also the co-inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer, for which he had the patents. He also had patents for seven other inventions.
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a private research university in University Park, Texas, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South—now part of the United Methodist Church—in partnership with Dallas civic leaders. However, it is nonsectarian in its teaching and enrolls students of all religious affiliations. It is classified among "R-2: Doctoral Universities – High Research Activity".
Steadman Upham was an American archaeologist and university administrator who served as president of Claremont Graduate University from 1998 to 2004 and the University of Tulsa (TU) from 2004 to 2016. Prior to this time, he was vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School and professor of archaeology at the University of Oregon. Many of the students at TU fondly called him, "Uncle Stead." Upham was a widely published archaeologist, having written or edited 10 books and more than 75 book chapters and journal articles. He lectured extensively in the United States and Canada. While at TU, he held a concurrent appointment as professor in the Department of Anthropology.
William Littell Everitt was a noted American electrical engineer, educator, and founding member of the National Academy of Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1933. He was adviser of numerous outstanding scientists at OSU including Karl Spangenberg, and Nelson Wax. His PhD adviser was Frederic Columbus Blake.
Magnus B. Egerstedt is a Swedish-American roboticist who is the Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He was formerly the Steve C. Chaddick School Chair and Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Leah H. Jamieson is an American engineering educator, currently the Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. Jamieson was a founder of the Engineering Projects in Community Service program (EPICS), a multi-university engineering design program that operates in a service-learning context. She is a recipient of the Gordon Prize. From 2006-2017, she served as the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering at Purdue.
The George R. Brown School of Engineering is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It contains the departments of Bioengineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Applied Mathematics and Operations Research, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Statistics. Engineering has been part of Rice's curriculum since the university's founding in 1912, but the school was not established as its own unit until 1975.
Mathukumalli VidyasagarFRS is a leading control theorist and a Fellow of Royal Society. He is currently a Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad. Previously he was the Cecil & Ida Green (II) Chair of Systems Biology Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Prior to that he was an executive vice-president at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) where he headed the Advanced Technology Center. Earlier, he was the director of Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a DRDO defence lab in Bangalore. He is the son of eminent mathematician M V Subbarao.
Steve C. Currall is an American psychological scientist and academic administrator, and served as the seventh president of the University of South Florida. He previously served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Southern Methodist University from January 1, 2016. From 2009 to 2014, Currall served as Dean of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He has also held leadership roles at University College London and Rice University. On March 22, 2019, Currall was named to succeed Judy Genshaft as president of the University of South Florida, and took office July 1, 2019. He announced his resignation due to health and family reasons on July 19, 2021.
Charles Sidney Burrus was an American electrical engineer and the Maxfield and Oshman Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is widely known for his contributions to digital signal processing, especially FFT algorithms, IIR filter design, and wavelets.
John H.L. Hansen is professor of electrical engineering (EE) and associate dean for research in Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science, at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). He is also the University Distinguished Chair in Telecommunications Engineering, and holds a joint appointment as professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is the son of Henrik Hansen, Danish wrestling champion who won a bronze medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, welterweight class, at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
James Lindsay Embrey, Jr., also known as J. Lindsay Embrey was an American real estate developer and philanthropist. He was a primary benefactor of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Southern Methodist University from 1970 to 1987. In 1978, he established an endowment for students majoring in engineering at the University. As of 2013, this endowment has provided scholarships for over 2,000 engineering students. In 1991, he was named emeritus of the board of trustees.
Harold Vincent Poor FRS FREng is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, where he is also the Interim Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is a specialist in wireless telecommunications, signal processing and information theory. He has received many honorary degrees and election to national academies. He was also President of IEEE Information Theory Society (1990). He is on the board of directors of the IEEE Foundation.
Frank Harrison Jr. was an American physician, professor and university administrator.
Andrew Patrick Sage was an American systems engineer and Emeritus Professor and Founding Dean Emeritus at the School of Information Technology and Engineering of the George Mason University.
Andrea Goldsmith is an American electrical engineer and the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. She is also the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton. She was previously the Stephen Harris Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, as well as a faculty affiliate at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Her interests are in the design, analysis and fundamental performance limits of wireless systems and networks, and in the application of communication theory and signal processing to neuroscience. She also co-founded and served as chief technology officer of Plume WiFi and Quantenna Communications. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Marc P. Christensen is an American engineer and academic who became the 17th president of Clarkson University on July 1, 2022.
James H. Mulligan Jr. was an American electrical engineer and professor. He was dean and professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering of University of California, Irvine and former secretary and executive officer of the National Academy of Engineering.