After completing the requirements for a MS in Physics from the University of Arkansas in 1977, I worked for Texas Instruments for over twenty years in integrated circuit process and equipment engineering. During that twenty years I worked for a year in Freising, Germany; chaired world wide factory teams on various improvement initiatives; and spent the last seven years as the engineering manager for the highest volume IC fabrication factory in TI in Sherman, Texas. In the course of performing these multiple tasks it became apparent to me that the traditional educational paths in science and engineering did not provide the optimal educational background for a person working in solid state device development and manufacturing.

I moved from industry to the University of Arkansas in April of 1998 because I was offered the opportunity to create a fully interdisciplinary educational program to prepare students to work in the realm of microelectronic and photonic materials, devices, and systems. This startup efforts financial support was provided through a NSF/ASTA grant to Dr. Greg Salamo to create an educational infrastructure in pursuit of ultra-fast electronics.

The interdisciplinary program I envisioned would include the science, engineering, and business aspects of advanced microelectronics-photonics, and would give our graduate students an avenue to create the type of rigorous, research specific curriculum that I would have valued as a hiring manager at TI. After examining the existing graduate degree options open to our students, I decided to pursue the creation of two new degrees. These new degrees would fill gaps in our graduate offerings and would result in a complete spectrum of degree options at the University of Arkansas to match the interests of students from any rigorous undergraduate BS degree in science or engineering.

The first degree was created within the Department of Physics to support Physics graduates interested in advanced physics studies, but also interested in diversifying their coursework at the MS level into applied physics or engineering arenas. This MS in Applied Physics became available in the fall semester of 1999, and is a degree designed to (1) create a highly marketable physics degree upon graduation while (2) fully preparing its graduates to enter the University of Arkansas PhD program in Physics.

The second degree created is a true interdisciplinary degree, the MS in Microelectronics-Photonics, which also became available in the fall semester of 1999. This degree operates as a virtual department that reports directly to the Dean of the Graduate School with a faculty that spans multiple engineering and science departments from both the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. The program is very flexible in considering applicants from a wide range of undergraduate degrees, with undergraduate deficiency courses required only as needed to support the specific graduate classes in a students curriculum. The MS degree requires its students to take two courses in applied physics, three in engineering, one in management of technology, and three in open science/engineering electives.

Students in the MS microEP degree program follow a matrix reporting structure that is unusual in the University environment but common in the industrial environment. Each student has a traditional relationship with their research professor and that research group. But all students that enter the microEP program in a given academic year also report to me as a pseudo-industry engineering group, a group that gathers in a weekly operations meeting to create and exercise the soft skills that will make them highly effective in their early careers after graduation.

The microEP program has twelve MS graduate students working on the degree in its first available semester, along with four entering PhD students. These four PhD students have started this fall under the support of newly awarded NSF IGERT grant to the University of Arkansas, anticipating the approval in spring 2000 of the PhD in Microelectronics-Photonics currently being prepared by the microEP faculty group.

As Director of the microEP program, I encourage any students that are interested in these degrees to contact or visit me. My primary measure of success of our university is our students use of their education in a rewarding career of their choice after graduation. Working with students to understand if my programs will support their career goals after graduation can be the first step in improving my measure of success of the University of Arkansas.