4/10/2014 Bill Bowman
Written by Bill Bowman
"Andrew is well-known for his many efforts on behalf of the department’s Faculty Recruiting Committee and other critical committees within the department, college, and on campus," said Placid Ferreira, MechSE’s Department Head. "We look forward to his dedicated service in his new role as associate head."
Alleyne joined the department in 1994 as an assistant professor, and then became an associate professor in 2000 and a full professor in 2004. He served as the College of Engineering’s Associate Dean for Research from 2008 to 2012.
"He has been the recipient of notable research and teaching awards and is an outstanding mentor to his students," Ferreira said.
This latter trait played a large part in Alleyne’s decision to take on his new role.
"What appealed to me, at the core, are the students," he said. "We have excellent students. If you go to IBM, GE or any other organization, large or small, what’s your most important resource? If you ask CEOs, they’ll tell you ‘Our most important resource is our people.’ And we have such good people here in MechSE."
He looks forward to helping guide the MechSE students as they learn, mature, and position themselves to launch their careers and make their impact in the world.
"We are now influencing the next generation of people who are going to build the future on a global scale," Alleyne said. "That’s a very attractive proposition."
Alleyne takes over the undergraduate office from Professor Kenneth Christensen, whose action-packed tenure as associate head included the 2013 ABET review. Thanks in large part to Christensen and Director of Undergraduate Programs Emad Jassim’s preparation efforts, this in-depth review of MechSE’s programs went extremely well.
"Ken did an excellent job of assembling a crack staff of folks who do a great job of directing our programs," Alleyne said. "Everything that’s being done is working very well. We have a very tight ship."
Taking over an already top-ranked office means there are no immediate crises to address, Alleyne said. But that does not mean he will not strive to improve the educational experience students receive in MechSE.
"The big-picture strategy is trying to see how we can take an already excellent product and, if possible, improve it," Alleyne said. "We might try to see how we can increase the global perspective of our student body as a whole. That’s global geographically but also global in terms of the types of ways that they can have an impact.
"Many of our students, when they leave here, will have an ability to influence the world in ways they really didn’t think about coming in. We are living in very exciting times."