Dean's Message

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Greetings,

The College of Engineering celebrated its 25th anniversary during the 2005-2006 academic year. An official ceremony to commemorate our 25 years of excellence was projected for October of 2005. Needless to say, the events on August 29, 2005 and thereafter changed our plans for this historical celebration - Hurricane Katrina hit our university with unprecedented ferocity! We were not able to return to our campus until after January 1, 2006, and even then, we had limited access to our facilities. As the only UNO academic building to flood, the Engineering Building required extensive mold remediation on the entire first floor. However, during the Spring 2006 semester we had a full complement of classes and laboratories by utilizing classrooms in other buildings on campus and laboratories at various locations.

As of the Fall 2006 semester, the College of Engineering has attracted 75% of its pre-Katrina undergraduate enrollment, and 70% of its graduate enrollment. The composite percentage is 74% of total pre-Katrina enrollment. Many of our students were displaced to other states and other cities within Louisiana, or they are not able to return to college due to financial reasons. While the university has endured significant budget cuts due to decreased enrollments, I am proud that the College of Engineering has not eliminated any of its programs.  All four of our undergraduate programs, as well as our M.S. and Ph.D. programs are doing extremely well considering the overall impact of Katrina on the New Orleans area.

Thanks must be given to our very dedicated faculty and staff who helped the College recoup from this horrible hurricane, even when some of these dedicated people lost everything they own, they put in hours, faith and conviction into our reconstruction. We have faculty and staff living in FEMA trailers while they work tirelessly to help recruit new students and take care of the ones who have returned. We also thank our university administration for working very hard to ensure that we can do our jobs of teaching, research, and service. Most important, we thank the UNO Engineering students who have returned; we thank them for having confidence in our ability to always deliver an excellent education no matter the difficulty or tribulation, so freshly proofed by the recent past.

Our research centers are all doing well. We have significant funding in all of them to support our faculty and graduate students. Much of the research that is underway is in conjunction with the rebuilding efforts of business and industry in the hurricane impacted area - now and the future is the time of the Engineer!

Please browse our website, especially our departmental pages. You will be amazed at how our programs are thriving. We are happy to support the engineering educational and research needs of the New Orleans region, the State of Louisiana, and the entire nation.

Russell E. Trahan, Jr.
Dean, College of Engineering
Chevron USA Professor of Electrical Engineering
Seraphia D. Leyda University Teaching Fellow