Dear Alumni:

Sustainability is a natural fit to UDM's mission as an urban Catholic university… it reflects our commitment of stewardship of all of God's world and all of God's children.

This fall, we dedicated the UDM Solar Power System as one very important and visible manifestation of this commitment.  That system impacts our world by teaching both pre-college and college students about sustainability in general and solar power in particular.  It also makes a real and direct impact on sustainability by generating enough electricity for about 40 percent of the Engineering building's lights… or to cook hot dogs like we did at the dedication.

However, this project is not our only sustainability activity in E&S:

• Professor of Chemistry/Biochemistry Shula Schlick and her students are working on the membrane stability of fuel cells with support from Ford and GM.
• Faculty from Chemistry (Assistant Professor Katherine Lanigan), Civil & Environmental Engineering (Associate Professor Alexa Rihana-Abdalla) and Biology (Associate Professor Mary Tracy-Bee) recently received a National Science Foundation curriculum development grant for interdisciplinary environmental studies.
• The U.S. Department of Transportation has created a new University Transportation Center (UTC) that UDM is leading, and one of its three focal areas is alternative fuels.  The UTC, with additional support from MDOT, will sponsor Chemistry Professor Mark Benvenuto's team working on conversion of peat and other cellulosic materials into ethanol… and Mechanical Engineering Professor Mark Schumack's team working with University of Toledo on new curriculum related to hydraulic hybrids.
• The UTC and UDM faculty will also partner with Ford Motor Company to develop high school curriculum in alternative fuels that will be piloted in Southeastern Michigan high schools and then rolled out across the country.

UDM's commitment to sustainability is not new.  Just this year we gave the College's most prestigious alumni award, Science Alumnus of the Year, to Dr. John Hanak, who completed his master's degree in Physical Chemistry here in 1955. Hanak was director of Photovoltaic Processes and Products at the Energy Conversion Devices Company, from which United Solar Ovonic was born.  He went on to make many important advances to solar energy technology as evidenced by his 84 scholarly papers and 45 patents.

Coincidentally, one of the co-investigators for our solar system project, Dr. Robert Ross, was a senior scientist at United Solar Systems for 13 years prior to joining UDM as a Physics faculty member.

It gives us great pride that our brightest and best students, faculty and alumni have made great contributions to sustainability. I am confident that UDM, working with our partners from government and industry, will make even greater contributions in the future.

Leo E. Hanifin, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Engineering and Science