Dean Alex Cheng (far left in blue shirt) spent time recently with Ole Miss engineering alumni in Vicksburg.
Social activity mixed with development presentations yielded a “win-win” situation for University of Mississippi School of Engineering administrators and alumni who gathered recently in Vicksburg.
Using the opportunity of Dean Alex Cheng’s visit to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center, or ERDC, a meeting was called at the 10 South Rooftop Bar and Grill, overlooking the city and the Mississippi River.
“Our purpose for meeting with ERDC was to seek an institutional-level research collaboration,” Cheng said. “As a good number of Ole Miss engineering graduates work at the ERDC and Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District, we took the opportunity to hold an alumni gathering to get acquainted and to bring news of the school to them.”
Others from UM in attendance were development officer Kevin Gardner of the UM Foundation; Jim Chambers, associate engineering dean and former director of the National Center for Physical Acoustics; and former UM Athletics Director Warner Alford. ERDC and Corps representatives included Maureen Corcoran, Ned Mitchell, Lakierra Brown, David May, Charles Burchfield and William “Bill” Lovelady.
“I enjoyed seeing an Ole Miss interest in increasing the presence of Ole Miss engineers at ERDC,” said May, a 2014 Ole Miss civil engineering graduate who is a research hydraulic engineer in the river engineering branch of the EDRC Coastal Hydraulics Laboratory. “All participants agreed that more needed to be done to increase the presence and influence of Ole Miss engineering at ERDC.”
The next day, an Ole Miss delegation visited the ERDC to build a long-term collaborative relationship. Participants included Cheng; Chambers; Josh Gladden, interim associate vice chancellor for research and NCPA director; Ahmed Al-Ostaz, Brevard family endowed chair of the Department of Civil Engineering; and Stephen J. Cutler, chair and professor of medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and pharmacognosy in UM’s School of Pharmacy.
Known as Waterway Experiment Station for many years, ERDC is a premier research facility for U.S. Army and Corps of Engineers research.