Dean's message
Future, Present and Past
April 2024
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As an engineering dean, I am future focused; AND I am well aware that our future plans and current successes here at the Jacobs School of Engineering are built on rock-solid foundations from the past.
Last year, for instance, we put up $256M in research expenditures. This is up nearly five percent from the year prior – and higher than it has ever been. You don’t just put up these kinds of research funding numbers overnight, or even over a decade. So where did the research strengths reflected in this number come from?
UC San Diego put down its deep roots in the 1960s thanks to incredible faculty who took a chance on a new vision for a university. Their efforts have translated into the forward-looking powerhouse of a university that we have today. One of our early engineering leaders who has been on my mind a lot lately is Professor M. Lea Rudee – he served as the first dean of engineering here at UC San Diego. Lea passed away recently. He did so much important work to bring UC San Diego’s incredible strengths in applied mechanics, engineering sciences, electrical engineering and computer sciences together under the umbrella of a new Division of Engineering. And he did it without losing sight of the humanity of everyone involved.
Lea, thank you for being an incredible role model and inspiration to so many. We will miss you, and we will continue the important work of building on your legacy. You have inspired us in our pursuit of engineering and computer science for the public good. The grand prize at our Research Expo is in Lea’s name, and soon we hope to honor him with the founding of a Lea Rudee endowed chair.
Over the years, I have learned the art of aligning the future, present and past to make the boldest positive impacts possible. I felt the alignment of our Jacobs School’s future, present and past particularly strongly while we hosted the ASEE Engineering Deans Institute here in San Diego this month. The positive feedback we received for our efforts to maximize the circulation of people and ideas in Franklin Antonio Hall – and for the people and ideas themselves – inspires me.
I also felt the alignment of future, present and past all across UC San Diego particularly strongly during Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla’s keynote at the ASEE Deans Institute banquet. It is gratifying to be on a campus where the campus-wide and engineering leadership are working together on the future of education and cross-disciplinary research. And in fact, part of my role as Special Adviser is to accelerate this cross-campus work.
Chancellor Khosla, for example, talked about the importance of working to cultivate the analytical and problem-solving skills in our future leaders – regardless of their majors. To make sense of our fast-changing world, students from all majors and disciplines will need new tools and new opportunities to deepen their ability to bring problem-solving, quantitative reasoning and other analytical skills to the critical challenges facing society that are relevant to their areas of study.
It is gratifying to be on a campus where future, present and past align to prepare all our students for our innovation-driven world. I am working hard to nurture, strengthen and expand the communities inside and outside the Jacobs School that are inspired and compelled to come together to invent a better future – with deep understanding of the past and a firm grounding in the present.
Read our full April 2024 news email here.
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@ucsd.edu
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano
Dean, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Special Adviser to the Chancellor for Campus Strategic Initiatives