A Legacy—and a Challenge 
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MARK KUSHNER RESIGNED SEPTEMBER 1 AS DEAN OF ENGINEERING AT IOWA STATE TO BECOME FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE MICHIGAN INSTITUTE FOR PLASMA SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN IN ANN ARBOR. I WILL BE STANDING IN AS INTERIM DEAN WHILE WE CONDUCT AN INTERNATIONAL SEARCH FOR HIS REPLACEMENT.
As much as we regret Mark’s leaving us, we recognize that from time to time wonderful opportunities like this one can entice stars like Mark to move on. Mark, we appreciate all you have done here at Iowa State, and we wish you well in all your new endeavors.
Mark’s leadership has left the college in excellent condition. Here we will discuss three of his signature initiatives that we will be pursuing over the course of the next year or so.
- First, the 2050 Challenge, which establishes the general conceptual framework within which all of our efforts—education, research, outreach—are pursued
- Next, the interdisciplinary research “clusters” we’re using to hire dynamic new faculty members to meet the challenges of mid-century
- Finally, the Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute, our primary vehicle for extending our priorities and expertise to both policymakers and the public
Developed and promoted by Dr. Kushner in conjunction with faculty and the college’s industrial partners, the 2050 Challenge seeks to engage both the values and imaginations of our engineering community, extending our vision even farther than the National Science Foundation’s 2020 initiatives to encompass virtually the entire careers of the young engineers we educate and hire today.
That’s a big vision, but the challenges we face demand no less. Food, water, climate, energy, security, communications: by 2050, our survival will turn upon our ability to meet the needs of nine billion human beings in a world of dwindling resources.
To catalyze our response to these challenges, we’ve introduced the system of so-called cluster hires, new faculty who have been recruited by at least two departments to help us broaden our research initiatives beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. We have recruited eight new faculty members so far into these cluster positions, and we look forward to their leadership in meeting the 2050 Challenge.
Cluster hires underscore our view that the research needed to meet today’s challenges—let alone tomorrow’s—increasingly lies between traditional disciplines, not within them. As an additional step in this direction, in the past several years we’ve established a number of new centers and institutes to promote these values, including the CyberInnovation Institute, the Bioeconomy Institute, and the Institute for Combinatorial Discovery.
“It takes more than ideas to bring these efforts to fruition;
it takes leadership as well.”
The Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute, which includes both the Engineering Leadership Program for undergraduates and the Engineering Thematic Year, will help prepare our undergraduates to become leaders able to grasp the best technological information available and use it to drive economic and policy decisions.
The Engineering Thematic Year for 2008–2009 is centered on energy. In that spirit, this issue of Innovate focuses on several challenges related to our dwindling fossil fuel resources. And while our central suite of stories looks at the promise of solar technology, we have also included a feature on work being done at the college to optimize internal combustion engines, as well as a story on the new Center for Biorenewable Chemicals, whose work will focus on converting the chemical industry from fossil to biorenewable feedstocks.
Let’s keep the momentum going. Our world, our nation, and the future of our children demand nothing less than our best.
