Transitions and renewal are important to the vibrancy of an academic community. This year we mark several of these: after 14 years as president, G. Wayne Clough leaves Georgia Tech to become Secretary of The Smithsonian Institution. The legacy of the Clough presidency is marked by accomplishments in many arenas, including growth in research, enrollments, facilities, and resources. Provost Gary Schuster has been named interim president and a Search Committee has been formed and charged to recommend candidates to the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia and the Board of Regents.

Other transitions that I want to highlight include personnel actions that become effective July 1, 2008: Sujit Banerjee has been awarded tenure as professor, Rachel Chen has been awarded tenure as associate professor, Yulin Deng has been promoted to professor and awarded tenure, and Chris Jones has been promoted to professor. Additionally, Lakeshia Taite joined the faculty last fall. Elsa Reichmanis and David Sholl joined the faculty in January. Elsa is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a former President of the American Chemical Society, and was director of the Materials Research Department at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies. Her research interests include the chemistry, properties, and application of materials technologies for photonic and electronic applications, with particular focus on polymeric and nanostructured materials for advanced technologies. David holds The Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Chair and is the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar for Energy Sustainability. His research focuses on materials whose macroscopic dynamic and thermodynamic properties are strongly influenced by their atomic-scale structure.

The School has an outstanding group of faculty members, and the awards and recognitions resulting from their accomplishments confirm that opinion. But I would like to highlight that the group includes six women: Sue Ann Bidstrup Allen, Rachel Chen, Martha Grover Gallivan, Hang Lu, Elsa Reichmanis, and Lakeshia Taite. Michelle Dawson will be added this fall and Julie Champion in fall 2009, bringing the total number to eight. While this is almost 25% of the faculty, our undergraduate and graduate student populations are about 40% women. Don't get me wrong: I do not think demographics of student and faculty populations need to match in order to have great educational and research programs; on the other hand, we want our students to see and have the full range of career opportunities, so matching these demographics is a desirable goal. Accordingly, while we take pride in the number of women who are our colleagues, we recognize that our goal is still before us, both with respect to gender and even more dramatically with respect to progress in developing ethnic diversity.

Many of you had communications with Jenny Daley Peterson in her role as director of development for ChBE, and know that she left GT to accept a part-time role with The Children's School in Atlanta. We are happy to introduce Melisa Baldwin as the new director of development for ChBE. She is an experienced development officer, having been a GT regional director of development with responsibilities for Florida and the Caribbean since January 2007, and prior to that, director of major gifts at Georgia State University. I am confident you will enjoy meeting with her as she interacts with you in fulfilling our development goals.

Finally, congratulations go to our outstanding graduates