Colorado State Dean of Engineering Announces Plans to Resign
The dean of Colorado State University’s world-renowned College of Engineering today announced plans to leave the university. Neal Gallagher will be taking on a new position as dean of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida.
"Colorado State University has a world-class college of engineering with unsurpassed faculty, unparalleled research and a strong commitment to student achievement. As several recent large grants, prestigious faculty fellowships and impressive student awards demonstrate, this is a college truly on the rise," said Larry Edward Penley, president of Colorado State University. "This clearly is an outstanding college with an incredibly bright future, and Neal Gallagher leaves a proud legacy of achievement. We appreciate Dr. Gallagher’s leadership and contributions to the college’s stature and wish him all the best."
Since 1999, when Gallagher began serving as dean, some of the engineering college’s many achievements include the following.
– Enrollment in the college is at a 10-year high, witnessing an increase of 12 percent in the past five years.
– Students entering the program are among the top in their class, many having been valedictorians and national merit scholars in high school. Overall, 28 percent of entering students were in the top 10 percent and 56 percent were in the top quarter of their high-school classes.
– The college consistently ranks in U.S. News and World Report’s "Best Colleges" edition as one of the best in the nation. In 2003, the undergraduate engineering program ranked 57th, advancing two spots from the previous year, and the graduate program ranks 56th in the nation for 2004.
– During the last five years, total sponsored research funding in the college has increased by more than 30 percent to $39.7 million.
– Since 2000, overall giving to the college by donors has doubled.
– The college received two National Science Foundation Engineering Research Centers to advance research in the areas of weather hazard detection, prediction and response, and extreme ultraviolet science and technology.
– Several other major research programs have been established or greatly enhanced over the past five years, including:
o A $3.8 million EPA grant that brings together a consortium of Colorado State and Colorado School of Mines faculty to create one of five U.S. centers that will conduct research and outreach on remediation of mine waste and hazardous substances.
o The college is leading the technology effort for a new $2 million Colorado Institute of Technology grant to further the Colorado Grid Computing Initiative, or COGrid, a statewide computing framework to provide high-performance grid computing capabilities to all areas and all citizens of the state.
o A $1.7 million industry-government award to improve transportation in the nation’s natural gas pipeline system.
o A $1.8 million grant from Congress to the Center for Geosciences to support the nation’s security efforts.
– Funding to enhance diversity in the college greatly increased, including a new $1 million NSF grant to the PEAKS program that encourages diverse populations to attend graduate school, and a $2.5 million renewal for the Colorado Alliance for Minority Participation program.
"There is an amazingly strong and talented group of people here at Colorado State. Being dean of this college is like being conductor of a symphony where every person is absolutely the best at what they do," said Gallagher. "I consider the department heads to be a very creative and resourceful group of people, and I believe every member of the college faculty and staff is exceptional."
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