Over the past few months, both the School of Management and the School of Engineering have seen new deans named. Deans David Gautschi and Alan Cramb are now at the helms of Management and Engineering, respectively, following extensive searches instituted by RPI, and both have several ideas for their schools.
Cramb and Gautschi have already begun collaborating in an effort toward a joint Masters and Bachelors degree in management and engineering. The degree would be targeted at students with a GPA above 3.25 who intend to have a Masters as a terminal degree. One of the largest changes taking place in the School of Engineering is the upcoming addition of an international experience requirement.
As part of The Undergraduate Plan, which seeks to make improvements to the undergraduate program, Cramb indicated that the international requirement would be gradually phased in and applied. He said, “It would be impossible to send over 700 students overseas the first time we do this.” Eventually, however, all engineering students will be required to take a semester, co-op, or summer semester overseas. As far as course sequence and density go, Cramb indicated that students would have a seamless transition in coursework overseas with the help of on-site RPI faculty. Also, he expressed opposition to changes in any of the engineering coursework requirements from the way they stand now.
As for facilities, Cramb mentioned the construction of two more research-oriented wind tunnels in addition to the two learning tunnels currently in operation at the JEC. As for the rumors of the Computer Science department moving to the Ricketts building, Cramb stated emphatically that it would remain an engineering building. In the next few years, it will undergo renovations and have state-of-the-are classrooms installed, but will still house all the labs that currently reside there.
The Undergraduate Plan seeks to bring RPI’s undergraduate research participation rate to 60 percent, within range of MIT’s 83 percent. For engineers, Cramb plans to do this by informing more students of the possibility of research and allowing students to take on independent projects that interest them, with a faculty mentor to guide them.
David Gautschi began as Dean of the Lally School this fall, and in that short time, has already devised far-reaching plans to both bring his school to new heights and get his students involved in research, something not normally associated with management. He plans to do this through a laboratory that will “model an enterprise market environment.”
Gautschi was a veteran of academia, but left it some time ago to pursue opportunities in the private sector, as he did not see business schools doing anything noteworthy or innovative. He was initially reluctant upon hearing of RPI’s need for a Dean of Management. When he arrived, however, he found himself impressed with the facilities, faculty, and vision of the Lally School and accepted RPI’s offer.
Gautschi sees his school’s guiding principle as providing students with an understanding of “the three primitives: an understanding of the enterprise, an understanding of the market, and the interactions between the two.” These primitives, he explained, go hand in hand with students becoming global citizens and participating in education and collaboration internationally. The School of Management currently has 13 international collaborations, including one with the Indian Institute of Technology, and is seeking more. Others include the Ukraine, the research and development center of the former USSR, and Tunisia and Algeria—two nations facing the challenge of becoming modern technological societies.
Overall, both deans have outlined sweeping visions for their schools in the context of The Rensselaer Plan and The Undergraduate Plan. Both of these visions involve internationalization, research-orientation, and a general blurring of the line between concept and application, especially between management and engineering.
