Category Archives: Universities

USA Science and Engineering Degree Data – 2007

A huge amount of interesting data can be found in NSF’s report on the USA: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (pdf)

Since 2000 women have received more science and engineering bachelors degrees than men. Men still receive more master’s and doctoral degrees in science and engineering.

2004 bachelor’s degrees	Female	Male
Engineering	13,257	51,418
Computer Science	14,406	42,999
Psychology	64,208	18,302
Science and engineering	227,813	224,525
Total non-S&E	583,004	371,667

200,000 more for bachelor’s degrees for women – wow. This is just a continuation of a trend but still is fairly amazing.

2004 Master’s degrees for US citizens	Female	Male
Engineering	7,135	26,737
Computer Science	6,195	13,658
Psychology	11,950	3,348
Science and engineering	51,420	66,631
Total non-S&E	276,782	160,704

2004 Doctoral degrees for US citizens	Female	Male
Engineering	1,014	4,353
Computer Science	195	690
Psychology	2,245	1,042
Science and engineering	9,819	15,728

Some more interesting data: 90% of Asian, 60% of Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander 40% of Hispanic doctoral S&E faculty were born outside the United States. Over 80 % of white, American Indian/Alaska Native, and multiple race doctoral S&E faculty were born in the United States.

$15 Million for San Jose State College of Engineering

San JosÃ© State Receives $15 Million Gift for College of Engineering:

The $15 million gift for the College of Engineering will be used to create endowments to support initiatives and programs in the areas of student and faculty development, leading-edge engineering, innovation and globalization. SJSU will request to officially name the college – the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering – at the California State University Board of Trustees meeting in March.

“Engineering education has driven the success of Silicon Valley, and San JosÃ© State University has been at the center of this success,” said Belle Wei, dean of the College of Engineering. “Chuck Davidson believes in the college’s mission to enable diverse and promising students to receive a quality, holistic engineering education. His gift will transform the college and help us achieve a new level of excellence in preparing our students to thrive in today’s dynamic and competitive world.”

European Innovation Scoreboard

European Innovation Scoreboard (pdf)

The US and Japan are still ahead of the EU25 in terms of innovation performance, but the innovation gap between the EU25 and Japan, and in particular with the US is decreasing (see Figure II). The EU25 has improved its relative performance compared to the US in S&E graduates, tertiary education, business R&D, early-stage venture capital, medium-high and high-tech manufacturing employment, EPO patents, USPTO patents and community trademarks. The EU has improved its relative performance compared to Japan mostly in S&E graduates and broadband penetration rate.
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Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Germany are the innovation leaders, with SII scores well above that of the EU25 and the other countries…
The US, UK, Iceland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Ireland are the innovation followers, with SII scores below those of the innovation leaders but above that of the EU25 and the other countries.

NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials

NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials is offering short courses this summer, one at Northwestern and one at UCLA. NSF fellowships are available to professors, high-school science teachers, post-docs and Ph.D. candidates from US universities. The fellowship consists of full tuition plus a travel allowance, if applicable. Apply by April 1, 2007. I really like that the NSF provides funds to help people attend this type of thing.

The objectives of the NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials are:

* To identify and promote important areas of nanotechnology, and to create new areas o focus which will augment current nanotechnology research and development by universities, industries and government.
* To train future and practicing engineers, scientists and educators in the emerging areas of nanotechnology, nano-mechanics, and nano-materials.
* To exchange new ideas, disseminate knowledge and provide valuable networking opportunities for researchers and leaders in the field.

The short courses offered by the Institute provide fundamentals and recent new developments in selected areas of nanotechnology. The material is presented at a level accessible to BS graduates of science and engineering programs. Emphasis is on techniques and theory recently developed that are not available in texts or standard university courses.

$60 Million in Grants for Universities

HHMI Invites Colleges to Compete for Grants to Strengthen Undergraduate Research, Mentoring, Computational Skills:

Institutions are invited to compete based on their proven records in preparing undergraduates for graduate education in science and for careers in scientific research and medicine. In the past, the top 200 colleges were invited to apply. This year, to increase the pool of applicants, the Institute invited the 226 colleges with the highest percentage of graduates, including underrepresented minorities, who go on to graduate or medical school. For the first time, invited institutions include a Native American tribal college.

A panel of leading scientists and educators will review the applications and make recommendations to the HHMI undergraduate science education grants staff. Awards will be announced in May 2008.

Through its Undergraduate Science Education Program, HHMI has awarded $235.8 million in grants to 126 colleges throughout the United States and Puerto Rico since 1988, part of $693 million in grants for undergraduate science education that the Institute has awarded to institutions of higher education, including research and doctoral universities. HHMI is the largest private supporter of science education in the United States.

This is a huge amount of money that can do a great deal of good.

$35 million to the USC School of Engineering

The 2006 Slate 60: Donations

Ming Hsieh, 50, founder of Cogent, a technology firm in Pasadena, Calif., that specializes in sophisticated identification systems including fingerprinting, gave $35 million to the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering in Los Angeles to coincide with the 100th anniversary of its electrical-engineering program. Hsieh (pronounced “shee”) graduated from the university in 1984 with a master’s degree in electrical engineering after earning his bachelor’s degree in the same field a year earlier. In exchange for this gift, his first to the university, the department has been renamed in his honor. Born on a rice farm in northern China, Hsieh grew up very poor. As a child, he constructed small radios and televisions from spare parts, according to a university spokesman. His interest in electronics was stoked by an uncle, and Hsieh emigrated to the United States to attend college after coming into an inheritance. He recently became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Schoofs Prize for Creativity 2007

Single-handed fishing kit reels in first place in invention competition:

Brian “Sunya” Nimityongskul got the idea for a system for one-armed fishing while recovering from shoulder surgery last summer. “I wanted to be fishing and not sitting at home,” he says. “Being an engineer, I decided I’d do something about it.” He worked on it during his free time, doing the design and machining himself

Declining Science and Maths Degrees in UK

Report: Core science and mathematics degree courses in the UK 1998-2007

In the decade to 2007, there has been a 10% reduction in the number of core, ie single honours, science and maths degree courses offered by UK higher education institutions.

Educational Institutions Economic Impact

I believe investing in creating an environment where science and engineering endeavors will flourish will greatly benefit the economy. Some previous posts discussing these ideas include: Great Engineering Schools and Entrepreneurism, Engineering Future Economic Success, Science Research and the Economy and China’s Economic Science Experiment.

Wisconsin’s effort is hardly unique, but I grew up in Madison and my father taught Chemical Engineering, Statistics, and more at the UW so I pay attention to the efforts in Madison. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has been one of the most successful attempts to take academic work and create successful business efforts to benefit the university, the professors and the economy overall. Their mission: “Moving inventions arising from the university’s laboratories to the marketplace for the benefit of the university, the inventors and society.”

Building Wisconsin’s Economy illustrates how the University of Wisconsin at Madison attempts to focus on creating economic benefit, which I think is a good idea. Economic benefit is not the only purpose, but it is worthy of focus.

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Contour-Surface Drawings

The Best Homework Ever?

Although the lecturer said he knew a great deal about this function from the point of view of calculus and linear algebra, he regretted that he could not visualize its geometric shape. I thought our graphics team could help him out. I telephoned my sophomore assistant, Ed Chang ’91, who rendered the surface on a computer using a contour-surface algorithm developed by Steve Ritter ’85 and Kevin Pickhardt ’85 in Professor Andries van Dam’s computer-graphics course. Thanks to overnight mail and one-hour film developing, we had slides of the surface in Berkeley in time for Professor Hirzebruch’s next lecture. He was delighted, and he has used our computer-graphics illustrations in his lectures and publications ever since.
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This is not only the best freshman math homework I have ever received. I contend it is the best overnight homework any teacher has ever received in any course at any level at any place in any subject at any time, ever, ever, ever. That is an extreme claim, but I’m still waiting for another teacher to produce a worthy challenger.