Letter from Dr. Richard Behr, Department Head
Dear Alumni and Friends,As you can see from the cover story, inevitable changes are occurring in the Penn State Architectural Engineering Department. Dr. Louis Geschwindner “retired” recently after over 35 years of meritorious service to Penn State and the AE Department. (Quotation marks are used around the word “retired” because Lou has already volunteered to teach one course per semester next year, and he has assumed a new, full-time position as VP for Engineering and Research at AISC. This does not look at all like retirement to me!)
Dr. Eric Burnett has announced his plans to retire as the Bernard and Henrietta Hankin Chair in Residential Building Construction in August 2005. Thus, we will be losing to retirement two senior faculty members. With these losses come opportunities, via the hiring of new faculty members, to explore new areas of research and scholarly activity, while always endeavoring to maintain the strong, B.A.E. professional degree program that has been the stable foundation of this department for many years.
We will be developing a new, three-year strategic plan this fall, and the recent and upcoming changes in the senior AE faculty will certainly factor into our strategic planning. I look forward to sharing our plans with you as we develop them and work diligently toward accomplishing them over the next few years.
I hope you enjoy the remainder of this summer. (It’s going fast.)
Best wishes to you and your families.
Yours truly,
Richard A. Behr, P.E., Ph.D.
Department Head