Dear Colleague,

We invite you to participate in an NSF and NASA GSFC sponsored MEMS Education Workshop on January 30, 2004, the Sunday preceding the MEMS 2005 conference in Miami, FL.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as a field has matured to the point where successful ‘MEMS-enabled’ products are on the market, and MEMS constitutes a substantial activity at research and teaching universities. This leads to education challenges and opportunities. The challenges lie in developing a curriculum which suits the needs of students seeking to be educated in this field, suitably spans the broad interdisciplinary space covered by MEMS, and creates a technically prepared workforce. The opportunity exists to incorporate MEMS into mainstream engineering education or to consider how it might be used as a vehicle to effect change in engineering education.

The workshop will bring together a diverse audience: academics teaching and researching MEMS, experts in engineering education, professionals from the MEMS industry, and leaders from MEMS-relevant government agencies. The expected outcomes of this workshop include (1) identifying ‘best practices’ that may be shared across organizations teaching MEMS courses, (2) identifying cross-cutting issues as the foundation for a set of recommendations to sponsor organizations for investment in MEMS educational development, and (3) establishing an open dialog on these issues for continued interactions.

The size of the workshop is limited to 50 participants to facilitate detailed discussions and to develop focused recommendations. If the number of applications to attend the workshop exceeds 50, participants will be invited from the pool of applicants to create a workshop with maximum diversity in institution and curricula. Please visit http://microsystems.stanford.edu/MEMS_ED05/ for details on the workshop and the online application to attend. A registration fee of $50 will help offset the cost of meals and breaks.

We hope you will consider participating and we look forward to working with you.

The Organizing Committee,
Martin Schmidt, Professor, MIT, Chair
Reza Ghodssi, Assistant Professor, UMD
Jack Judy, Associate Professor, UCLA
Beth Pruitt, Assistant Professor, Stanford
Taher Saif, Associate Professor, UIUC
Kim Turner, Associate Professor, UCSB