Message from the Chair

Abstract

I have listened to many exciting presentations at division meetings over the past eight years, but only a fraction of these end up being submitted to the Journal for publication.  I urge you to dust off some of your previous conference presentations, start up a new research study that promises exciting results, or write up the results from that work you did but never got around to publishing.  Enlighten us.  We are interested in what you have to say.

Wow!  Some of you who may know me will find it hard to believe that I am actually at a loss for words.  I know that this is my chance to write something really though-provoking, inspirational, and profound, but I'm not sure where to start.  I read through the messages of previous Division chairs and I was humbled.  I was also honored to know that I had been elected to serve as chair of a Division such as this.  We are a Division "on the move."  We have been making steady progress towards all of the goals that we have set for ourselves over the past few years.  Our membership has grown; we have instituted several new awards to honor our members; we have seen an increase in the number of members who actively participate in the work of the division.  So what is there left to do?  All of my predecessors had some agenda item that was the focus for their term - sometimes it was an agenda item of their own choosing, sometimes it was one that the membership championed.

I have not heard of any burning issues that were brought up during the annual meeting, so I guess that means I might be able to pick an agenda item, all by my self.  What a scary thought!  I fell so powerful and in command!  Actually, when I realized that I was going to have to come up with a profound topic for discussion on my own, I couldn't think of anything at first, but thought it would be silly to write a Chair's Message that consisted of only five words - "Keep up the good work."  I asked our journal editor for guidance on how many words were required, and was informed 10,000 (I think she was joking).  But in the process, I discovered that there was no real rush to complete this message because there was only one paper ready for publication at the time.  After cogitating for a while on our lack of papers, I decided that this would be the message I would like to focus on for this issue of the journal.

Although I have not been around for as long as some (read Larry Goss here), I believe that this division was founded on the premise that engineering graphics educators needed to: 1) be able to meet to share ideas for teaching graphics, and 2) have a forum for publication of topics of interest to a broad spectrum of engineering graphics educators.  I believe we are achieving the first of these objectives very well.  Our meetings are informative, interesting, and sometimes just plain fun (read Pat Connolly here).  However, it seems that we are somewhat lacking in achieving our second objective.

I have been told that our Journal is the oldest or one of the oldest in all of ASEE.  I would gate to see the Journal die a slow and painful death through lack of submissions from members.  I have listened to many exciting presentations at division meetings over the past eight years, but only a fraction of these end up being submitted to the Journal for publication.  I strongly believe that professional development is a crucial component for preserving your sanity as a faculty member.  We desperately need a creative outlet and some intellectual stimulation that we typically do not get from teaching our courses day in and day out.  Nor do we get this sort of intellectual stimulation from sitting in endless committee meetings on our campuses.  As a Division, we need to be engaged in scholarly activity.  If we are to be respected among our academic peers, we must write and publish papers that are of high quality and that highlight our scholarly work.  We need to be asking and answering significant questions through well-planned research and curricular studies.  I realize that it is difficult to carve out the time for scholarly work from our already frenetic schedules, but doing so will enable us to move forward in our quest for excellence in graphics education.

Many of the papers presented in our midyear and annual meetings would be of interest to our colleagues who cannot attend our meetings.  They will likely never hear of our work unless it is published in the Journal.  So, if we ever get enough papers to publish this issue of the Journal and you get a chance to read this most inspiring message, I urge you to dust off some of your previous conference presentations, startup a new research study that promises exciting results, or write up the results from that work you did but never got around to publishing.  Enlighten us.  We are interested in what you have to say.