Iowa State Lecture Series in Global Issues Opens to Public

A complete lineup for the series, as well as enrollment information for students, can be found online at http://www.ede.iastate.edu/


Engineering Distance Education at Iowa State University has announced that, for the first time in the history of the series, all lectures of invited guests of the university’s course in “Technology, Globalization, and Culture” will be free and open to the public.

While the speakers are part of a tuition-based course taken for credit both on campus and online, organizers say that both ongoing and emerging global issues have created the ideal circumstances for expanding the outreach of the course to include the general public.

“2008 may well mark the beginning of a perfect storm of crises affecting everyone, not just academics and policy makers,” says ISU mechanical engineering professor Jim Bernard who, along with Professor Mark Rectanus of the Department of World Languages and Cultures, established the course and lecture series in 2004.

“Gas at $4, the mortgage meltdown, turmoil in world financial markets, climate change, increasing food prices across the world, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: you name the crisis,” Bernard continues, “and you don’t have to look far to see how it jumps international borders to affect people around the globe. And the pace of these events is only accelerating.”

Both students and the public will have the opportunity to interact directly with leaders from industry, academia, and government who grapple daily with the local impacts and global intersections of these forces, Bernard says. Past lecturers have included leaders such as former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, and former Iowa Representative and current director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics Jim Leach, as well as top industrial executives such as Klaus Hoehn of Deere and Company and Greg Churchill of Rockwell Collins.

This year’s lineup has yet to be finalized, but the course has received commitments again from Rockwell’s Churchill, as well as from Mike Mack, Chief Financial Officer of John Deere. The industrial perspective will be complemented by top policy makers and analysts such as Arizona State University President Mike Crow, an expert in science and technology policy who recently oversaw the establishment of the Global Institute for Sustainability at ASU, and Richard Longworth, a senior writer for the Chicago Tribune who specializes in international and economic news.

Besides having the opportunity to attend in person in the Lee Liu Auditorium of Howe Hall on the Iowa State campus, members of the ISU community and general public will also be able to view individual lectures free of charge in real time over the Internet. Facilitated by advanced technology, Bernard remarks, this wide-open approach is itself characteristic of the globalizing juggernaut.

“The emergence of breathtaking bandwidth has made global communication essentially free,” he says, “and that changes everything. Our colleagues, competitors, and markets now span the world, and we need to adapt to succeed.”

That process of adaptation, says Rectanus, demands a deeper understanding of the cultural contexts from which those colleagues and competitors operate.

“Certainly, technology drives globalization to a significant degree,” he observes. “But globalization is a highly complex process that can’t be reduced to the dissemination of advanced computation or other feats of engineering. Without broader understanding, engineers, executives, and policymakers risk serious miscalculation in their efforts to compete in global markets.”

“But it’s not just information for professional managers,” Bernard emphasizes. “Every citizen needs the kinds of knowledge offered by our speakers in order to better understand how the rapidly changing global marketplace impacts their lives. So we invite them to join the conversation.”

A complete lineup for the series, as well as enrollment information for students, can be found online at http://www.ede.iastate.edu/

Master of Engineering in Industrial and System Engineering

INTRODUCING TWO NEW COURSEWORK-ONLY MASTERS DEGREES FROM ENGINEERING DISTANCE EDUCATION AT IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY:
MASTER OF ENGINEERING IN SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND MASTER OF ENGINEERING IN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

In a hyper-competitive global marketplace, you need every advantage to meet—and beat—competitors who are working 24/7 to break into your markets. And if a company’s #1 advantage is its people, then why not give them the advantage of coursework-only master’s degrees in Systems or Industrial Engineering from Engineering Distance Education at Iowa State University?

As a student you’ll get the benefit of a world-class graduate education from one of America’s leading research institutions—without the need to produce a thesis or research project. As an employer you’ll see the benefit of that education in your company’s industrial processes and production systems in real time, as the knowledge your people get from working with some of the best in the business goes to work for you.

If your company is looking to take its systems and industrial processes to the next level, there’s no better place than Iowa State’s online learning environment to see goals turned into accomplishments. Iowa State’s Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering placed among the top 20 such departments in public institutions in the latest national rankings of U.S. World Report. And Engineering Distance Education has been delivering this excellence to students worldwide for more than half a century.

learn more about coursework-only master’s option in Industrial Engineering or Systems Engineering for your global workforce.

Online Masters Degree in Industrial Engineering

No one needs to tell industrial leaders about the 2050 Challenge: for those competing on a global playing field, 2050 is now. With the rise of China, India, and a host of other industrial powers on the world stage, businesses must exploit every possible efficiency in order to survive, let alone thrive. And that means engaging engineers who can design and implement the tools, practices, and processes that determine if a given enterprise will ultimately succeed or fail in this hyper-competitive environment.

With a graduate degree or certificate in industrial engineering from Iowa State, you’ll be more than just a cog in the machine—you’ll help design the machine. EDE’s programs in industrial engineering offer education and research opportunities that address productivity, cost, quality, and lead time, all fundamental issues affecting the economic health of industry. So whether you specialize in engineering management, operations research, manufacturing, human factors, or enterprise computing, you’ll acquire the tools you need to lead—and succeed—in the 21st-century business world.

Enterprise computing focuses on the principles and practices of the engineering methods and information technology used to design, analyze, and implement scalable enterprise-wide systems. Courses are available in e-commerce systems, data mining and knowledge discovery, enterprise modeling and integration, and manufacturing information systems.

Manufacturing systems engineering addresses the development and application of tools and methods that support production, with particular emphasis on the design/manufacturing interface, manufacturing processes, and systems integration and design. Courses are available in rapid prototyping, CAD/CAM, concurrent engineering, automation, and quality control.

Applied operations research concentrates on the application of mathematical theory and modeling to quantitative problems, including the design and analysis of industrial, commercial, and governmental systems and operations. Specific research areas include mathematical optimization, stochastic processes queuing, simulation, inventory and scheduling, networks, artificial intelligence, and logistics.

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS AND INFORMATION

Masters in Industrial Engineering

Online Engineering Distance Education Home Page

EDE and the 2050 Challenge: It's About Time

What is the 2050 Challenge?

Mention “distance education” and most people think of overcoming the limitations of space. From the earliest “correspondence courses” to the latest online offerings, distance education has been thought of generally in physical terms, affording learning opportunities to people for whom getting to campus can be a bit of a challenge.

Certainly, EDE at Iowa State is all about overcoming that kind of distance: whether you’re in Des Moines or New Delhi, we have the world-class teachers, training, and technology to bring you the best in engineering education. But for us, “distance education” goes far beyond mere distance in the physical sense to include time as well.

By the year 2050, there will be more than 9 billion people on this small spaceship Earth. With our numbers burgeoning, our planet warming, and our supplies of energy and other natural resources dwindling, what must we as engineers do today, tomorrow, and the next 15,000-odd tomorrows after that to ensure that by 2050 we have:

* Enough food and potable water for 9 billion people?
* Reliable communications for people worldwide?
* New medical technologies against emerging threats to health?
* Robust and secure transportation networks?
* Renewable, non-polluting sources of energy?

Because these are fundamentally engineering challenges, we as engineers are challenged as never before to see beyond the next five to ten years (here’s one instance where “2020 vision” is nearsighted!) to envision instead the breadth and length of our careers in the profession. For many of us, that means seeing all the way to 2050—and beyond.

And when you see further down that road—when you see what the world will need over the course of your working life—you can see what you must do not merely to keep your engineering skills and knowledge current, but beyond that to prepare yourself as an engineer for the challenges we’ll face together by 2050.

So let EDE help you close the distance not only between where you are right now and a state-of-the-art classroom at Iowa State University in Ames, but also between where your career is right now and where it needs to be tomorrow in order to meet the 2050 Challenge—and whatever other challenges you’ll meet in your professional life.
Because at EDE, it’s not just about distance. It’s about time.

Iowa State University Construction Engineering Education

Ames, Iowa – Iowa State University is a leader in construction engineering education and recently its graduate courses CE 594E: Project Controls and CE 594F: Computer Applications for Project ControlsProfessional Surveyor Magazine’s January 2008 issue on the evolution of land surveyor education.
were featured in

Two years ago when the courses were introduced, they were the first-of-their-kind in the country on 3D GPS automated grade control systems. And soon, distance education students will able to take the course as part of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering’s online master’s degree program in construction engineering and management.

Beginning in April 2008, the online courses will be presented in four-week sessions via state-of-the-art video streaming on a secure Web site so students can view the classes in “real time” or on demand. During the courses, students will hear from contractors, consulting engineers, designers, surveyors, and equipment dealers from leading companies such as McAninch, CAT/Ziegler, Snyder & Associates, and others about how each those individuals and businesses use the equipment. Students also will get an overview of GPS systems, stakeless grading, intelligent construction, and GPS theory, as well as address the challenge of converting CADD drawings to machine control files.
For the complete article in Professional Surveyor Magazine, see the magazine’s electronic version and scroll to page 16.

For information on enrolling in the courses, visit the Iowa State Engineering Distance Education Web site (www.ede.iastate.edu).

Chuck Jahren, professor of construction engineering, (515) 2974-3829