Message from the Chair

Abstract

It seems like only yesterday that I wrote the first of these columns allowed to your Chair.  I have enjoyed my year as Chair and am passing the "torch" on to our capable Vice-Chair, Jim Leach.  The Engineering Design Graphics Division is a volunteer organization and I appreciate the service and support of all officers, chairs and other members.  Thank you!  By the time you read this each of the members should be wearing their EDGD recognition pin which was authorized by the Executive Committee and mailed this Spring.  I hope you will wear it and feel a kinship with colleagues you see also wearing the pin.

Now that I am "emeritus" at Ohio State I find that I can't stay away from the classroom.  Autumn quarter there were two classes of Honors graphics with 35 really intelligent and earnest young men and women in each class.  Winter quarter we did take a vacation and in Spring I had one class of beginning graphics and another in design for manufacture using Solidworks — fun.  Our vacation was a trip to New Zealand and Australia (mostly New Zealand) and I couldn't stay away from graphics: we stopped at the University of Canterbury near Christchurch.  We were greeted warmly and invited to sit in on a course planning meeting.  Same discipline — same great people: we have a lot in common with graphics professionals everywhere.  Last Winter we visited eight other universities to learn about their graphics programs and were welcomed at each one (paper in this edition of the Journal).

My goal, since leaving industry and becoming a professor, has been to help people learn about graphic communication so that they can be productive citizens.  I believe that all of my colleagues share the same focus: to help people learn to visualize, to communicate, to create.  It is good to associate with friends who share this same focus.  And like other Chairs before me, I shall not leave the Engineering Design Graphics Division — just work with my friends in a different role.