The University of Idaho Electrical Engineering Department intends to use a recent $1 million donation from the Micron Foundation to improve the school’s microelectronics program.
The department will not spend the donation directly, but instead will use the revenue generated from investing the money to fund research, hire students, do experiments and travel.
Larry Stauffer, dean of the College of Engineering, said the investment should yield between $40,000 and $50,000 per year, and that this number should grow over time.
He said one of the primary functions of the donation is that it allows the department to fund an endowed professorship — a position that allows a tenured faculty member to direct the use of the revenue from the donation to fund research projects, student employment and related travel costs.
Stauffer said a search committee decided on Fred Barlow, a microelectronics professor within the electrical engineering department for the position. He said this appointment will last five years with the option of a single renewal for five more years, after which time the department will need to select a new candidate.
Barlow said the Micron Foundation’s donation will help Micron, in addition to helping the university.
“(Micron) would like us to generate more students with that set of expertise. So the fact that we can hire more students, and that we can have more resources for that area enables us to have a stronger program,” Barlow said. “The students benefit, the university benefits and the company benefits. So it really is a win-win-win kind of a situation, and I think that’s what’s pretty exciting about this.”
Stauffer said having a named professorship that is backed with an endowment gives the university additional credibility, and had already helped encourage a new Texas-based researcher to work for the university.
“That actually made a big difference in recruiting that new professor, because he got to exercise some discretion over some of those funds, and of course, the idea of working with a named professor was a big deal to him,” Stauffer said.
Stauffer said the department will also use the money to help fund trips to China and Singapore during the summer, where they will meet with people from other universities and electronics companies. He said they will also be able to hire more student employees to run research projects.
Stauffer said part of the money will be used to start a new research center, which researchers will use to explore issues within the microelectronics industry. He said these researchers will do research on electronic packaging, which focuses on how to package a microchip’s circuitry in a way that it can be placed on a circuit board, and then into a product.
Barlow said microelectronics is a wide-reaching science, and microchips have become inexpensive enough that they can now be found in everyday items such as coffeemakers, refrigerators and even pets.
Stauffer said this donation will help make the electrical engineering program stronger, and help students get more experience in microelectronics.
“It really helps solidify some of the expertise in that program. We have one of the best power engineering programs in the country. That’s a program that tends to serve power utilities, but (also serves) other power applications,” Stauffer said. “So now, complementing that, we’re growing the microelectronics side of electrical engineering. So it really helps make our whole (electrical engineering) program that much more comprehensive.”
Daphne Jackson can be reached at [email protected]