Testimony, March 2005, Office of the President, University of Maryland

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Fighting an Uphill Battle Continued

From 1999 to 2002, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering successfully recruited 12 talented, young faculty members (including four women and two African-Americans). Each of these faculty members has had a positive impact on the success of our programs. The list below summarizes a few of their more noted accomplishments.

Dr. Min Wu, Ph.D., Princeton University, hired in August 2001

2002 NSF Career Award Winner

Named One of the World?s Top One Hundred Young Innovators by the MIT Technology Review

Dr. Pamela Abshire, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, hired in November 2001

2003 NSF Career Award Winner

2004 George Corcoran Award

Dr. Rajeev Barua, Ph.D., MIT, hired January 2000

2002 NSF Career Award Winner

2003 George Corcoran Award

Dr. Reza Ghodssi, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, hired January 2000

2002 NSF Career Award

2001 George Corcoran Award

Dr. Richard La, Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley, hired in August 2002

2003 NSF Career Award Winner

Dr. Thomas Murphy, Ph.D., MIT, hired in August 2002

Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, April 2004

Dr. Sennur Ulukus, Ph.D., Winlab at Rutgers, hired August 2001

2004 NSF Career Award Winner

2003 IEEE Marconi Paper Prize Award in Wireless Communication

Put beside this stellar group is one stark fact: The department hired only one faculty member in 2003 and one in 2004. Since 2003, financial constraints have essentially stopped the department?s recruiting efforts.

The College of Education has been raided by other universities. Vanderbilt University successfully hired the husband-wife team of Steven Graham and Karen Harris from our Special Education department to an endowed chair. They were part of both the 7th ranked Special Education Department and the 9th ranked Educational Psychology Program. We were unable to compete with the combination of salary, research support, and private school tuition for their daughter they offered.

In the highly competitive world of business schools, the R.H. Smith School of Business lost ground. During 2000 and 2001, we hired 32 faculty including a number of spectacular people who drove the tremendous gains by the School. From 2002-2004, we lost 24 faculty, and were only able to replace 12 of them over the last three-year period. As a point of reference, faculty turnover in the Smith School before 2002 was one to two per year. Lack of resources kept us from filling all of our vacancies. In 2002-2003, the Smith School was able to recruit one star from North Carolina but has made no senior hires since.

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