November 15, 2005 —
Upcoming Viterbi School Centennial Lectures in 2006 |
|
|
Jan. 26, 2006 Lynn Orr, Keleen and Carlton Beal
Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Director of the Global Climate
and Energy Project at Stanford University, hosted by the USC Mork
Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.
Feb. 1, 2006: Rudolph E. Kalman, professor emeritus, ETH,
Zurich, “The Newtonian Revolution: Interaction of Mathematics with High
Technology,” hosted by the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical
Engineering.
Feb. 17, 2006: John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, hosted by the Department of Computer Science.
March 9, 2006: Professor Toby Berger, Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, hosted by the
Department of Electrical Engineering.
March 31, 2006: Roderic Pettigrew, director of the
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, hosted by
the Department of Biomedical Engineering. |
|
|
Professor
William B. Rouse, director of the Tennenbaum Institute at the Georgia
Institute of Technology delivered two lectures to kick off a series of
USC Viterbi School centennial lectures. He was hosted by the
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering.
In a morning talk
entitiled The Future of Industrial Engineering: Shop Floors to Factories to Supply Chains to Enterprises Rouse outlined “enterprise transformation” as an essential part of growth and change in all organizations.
“It’s important that enterprises understand what drives
fundamental change, because without that understanding, most
enterprises fail,” Rouse said . “The notion of the enterprise is
what industrial engineers have, what we can embrace, and where we can
make critical contributions today.”
Rouse has more than 30 years of experience in engineering, management
and marketing related to individual and organizational performance,
decision-support systems, and information systems. Currently, he is a
professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the
Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a joint appointment within
the College of Computing. He also serves as executive director of
Georgia Tech’s Tennenbaum Institute for Enterprise Transformation, and
until four months ago, was chair of the School of Industrial and
Systems Engineering..
In a special evening lecture,
Moving Up in the Rankings: Creating and Sustaining A World-Class Research University,
Rouse discussed enterprise transformation as it applies to
universities. “Higher education is a saturated market today,” he said.
The globalization of university-based engineering education and
research has created intense competition among leading universities,
all of which want to move up in the rankings.
To move up, institutions have created their own national and
international brands,” he said. High visibility brands tend to be at
the top of the rankings and vice versa. For instance, the Trojan name
has a fairly high recognition rate overseas, because of USC’s Distance
Education Network, its football team, and its many academic
partnerships.
But universities should be considered “places where innovation occurs,
not where faculty get tenure,” Rouse said. “You have to have the best
faculty and the best students possible, but we probably should create a
more flexible view of faculty career paths and redefine what success
is.”
 |
| Jim
Moore, chairman of the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering, chats with Professor William Rouse, guest speaker from
Georgia Tech's Tennenbaum Institute for Enterprise Transformation. |
To stay competitive, universities must continue to
recruit as many excellent faculty and students as they can, because
faculty can bring in research funding and help the university build its
reputation. Excellent faculty attract excellent graduate
students. And the size of an institution's faculty and student
body matters in the rankings.
Universities and their academic schools must also be able to
create innovative programs and continually strive to generate new
resources, through fundraising, research support, partnerships and
exchange programs.
Rouse added that networking and relationship-building with a
university’s key constituencies — especially its alumni — is a key way
of generating support.
Rouse’s talk will be followed on Jan. 26, 2006 ,
with a special lecture by Professor Lynn Orr, Keleen and Carlton Beal
Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Director of the Global Climate
and Energy Project at Stanford University. The lecture will be hosted
by the USC Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials
Science.
-- Diane Ainsworth
Click the link below for a webcast replay of the lecture:
