Purdue Board of Trustees ratifies named headship for AAE
The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday, Dec. 16th, approved the head of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics to a named department head position. Dr. Tom Shih was ratified as the J. William Uhrig and Anastasia Vournas Head and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The Purdue University Board of Trustees has approved a named headship for the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Dr. Tom Shih was ratified on December 16, 2016 as the J. William Uhrig and Anastasia Vournas Head and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. A generous gift from alumnus J. William Uhrig (BSAAE 1982) and Anastasia Vournas made this possible. This funding granted to Dr. Shih’s endowed headship will enable the school to engage in innovative educational and research initiatives. These initiates will impact hundreds of students each year in offering a host of unique opportunities.
Dr. Shih shared the following vision with the Board of Trustees:
“I am extremely honored by this endowed headship and excited about what it could do for the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I want to express my deepest thanks to Bill Uhrig and Anastasia Vournas for their generosity and for wanting to help our school move forward.
The funding from this endowed headship will enable us to continually enhance the excellence in the quality of education that we provide to our students on rigor, depth, critical thinking, and problem solving at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We want student success to be linked to creating dreams that inspire, making those dreams into reality to show the strength of the human spirit and the human ingenuity, and to discovering mysteries of the universe to fulfill our deepest yearnings to understand.
We want to create a stimulating environment to nurture the next-generation of aerospace engineers, visionaries, and leaders. As engineers, our job is to make dreams into reality. We are working to create a collaborative and nurturing environment across departments and colleges within Purdue and with our partners in government and the private sector to chart a course to make Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics a most exciting and dynamic place to learn, grow, discover, and make dreams into reality.”
The official Purdue news release is available here.
Publish date: December 16, 2016