Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has been elected by his peers to serve on the Engineering Deans Council (EDC)

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos

Executive Board.

The EDC is one of the leadership organizations of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), a non-profit organization which brings together engineering educators from all of the engineering and engineering technology fields to collaborate on solutions to promote excellence in instruction, research, public service, and practice.

The EDC sponsors an annual colloquium to review public policy issues that affect engineering education and  encourages engineering deans to communicate with their congressional delegations regarding these issues. The public policy issues range from economic development and the engineering workforce, to support of federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. The council also supports a yearly dean's institute that focuses on issues such as curriculum development, enrollment and retention, diversity, faculty collaboration with industry and the globalization of engineering education.

Yortsos' two-year term will begin on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, at the conclusion of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Vancouver, British Columbia, and conclude at the end of the 2013 ASEE Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia,

The 2009-2011 chair of the EDC, Dean Kenneth Galloway of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering, informed Yortsos of his election in a March 29, 2011 letter.

Two other engineering school deans were elected to the council along with Yortsos.  They are David Munson, of the University of Michigan, and Darryll Pines, University of Maryland, College Park. The 2011-2013 EDC chair will be Nicholas Altiero of Tulane University and the vice-chair will be Louis Martin-Vega, of North Carolina State University.

The EDC Executive Board meets in the Fall in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the EDC Public Policy Committee.  All members of the EDC Executive Board are ex officio members of the EDC Public Policy Committee.

Yortsos was appointed Dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering in 2005. He is the Chester F. Dolley Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and holds the Zohrab A. Kaprielian Dean’s Chair in Engineering.