Letter from Dr. Chimay Anumba, Department Head
Dear Alumni and Friends,
I am delighted to be able to write to you as the new AE Department Head. Architectural Engineering at Penn State has a long and 
distinguished tradition and I am deeply honored to be given the opportunity to contribute to this. I look forward to working with the outstanding group of faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends to ensure that this is universally acknowledged as the pre-eminent AE program in the world. The Department is very well placed to move to this next level and, in this regard, I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Dr Richard Behr, for his leadership and service to the AE Department over the last ten years.
The esteem in which the Department is held was strongly reinforced when my wife, Claire, and I attended the AE Department’s Career Fair in November 2007. It was great to see over one hundred and forty companies from all over the country seeking to recruit our graduates. They were all highly enthusiastic about the quality of our program and the value that our graduates have added to their businesses over the years. It was also wonderful to see so many AE alumni coming back to recruit more AE graduates. I certainly intend to build on this.
The Department faces many challenges in the coming years. First is the tight economic environment within which we are expected to do more with fewer resources. Then there is the need to streamline and strengthen our undergraduate program, providing more flexibility and enhancing quality. The graduate program also needs to be developed further, particularly to enable the achievement of our new strategic goal of leading the development of high performance green buildings. Considerable progress has been made over the last ten years in raising the research profile of the Department but more needs to be done. There is also the growing competition from new AE programs across the country, which means that we cannot afford to be complacent or rely on past glory. The wider issues of sustainability, globalization and technological development will continue to shape and inform our future operations.
Addressing the above challenges requires a multi-faceted strategy that builds on past AE traditions but provides the agility to respond to emerging opportunities. I am working with the faculty and staff in the development of a new 5-year strategic plan, details of which will become available at a later date. However, it is evident that additional resources are required to upgrade our teaching and research facilities, attract and retain the highest quality faculty, staff and students, and maximize the potential of the new opportunities open to us. As such, I would like to solicit your support towards the establishment of major endowments for the AE program, as these will remove the constraints that limit the achievement of our goals.
Finally, I would like to seize this opportunity to thank you all for supporting the Department (in cash and in kind) over the years and to wish you a new year that is your best yet!
With best regards,
Dr Chimay J. Anumba
Professor and Department Head