Andreas Cangellaris, Laura Hahn, Joe Girotti, and Dave Goldberg met representatives from many companies at Engineering Career Fair held at the new iHotel in Champaign.  Thanks are due to Sarah Zehr, Director of Engineering Career Services, for making this happen.

The Facebook group Friends of iFoundry has a new video capturing the sights and sounds of last Thursday’s FreshmanFest. It is also up on iFoundry’s YouTube channel here.

In today’s Message from the Dean, Dean Ilesanmi Adesida announced the establishment of iFoundry as a college activity:

To better serve engineering in the future, a group of faculty members has been brainstorming about creative ways in which we can strengthen the creative capacity of our students–to preserve their strong technical skills while emphasizing the elements of design, entrepreneurship, and social responsibility. This led to the idea for a collaborative pilot program in the college to serve as a foundry for engineering curriculum innovation. Over the past year, the idea for such an initiative for curriculum enrichment was extensively debated among College of Engineering faculty, administrators, students, and industry stakeholders, and attracted significant interest and support to move forward.

Therefore, it is with pleasure that I announce the launch of iFoundry: The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education, an interdepartmental curriculum innovation incubator that will serve as the focus of engineering curriculum innovation activities in the college, fostering creative enrichment of our curriculum and harnessing the innovation of our faculty to create a new paradigm for engineering education in the 21st century. I have asked Professors David Goldberg (IESE) and Andreas Cangellaris (ECE) to serve as co-directors of this initiative. Initially, iFoundry efforts will focus on realigning humanities and social science coursework in student-selected themes, injecting digital media content into new and existing coursework, and making the first two years of engineering education more effective and attractive.

Over the next couple of months, David and Andreas will be meeting with the leadership and curriculum committees of all departments in the college to discuss the vision of the initiative and engage faculty to contribute to the definition, development and implementation of an enriched educational experience for our students, faithful to the Illinois tradition for leadership in engineering education (The current iFoundry website is at http://www.ifoundry.illinois.edu).

The full text of the Dean’s message may be downloaded here.