New engineering dean: 'Watch UAA, it will be a different place in 10 years'

Drivers passing beneath the sleek arch over Providence Drive might be curious about what's at either end.

On the south side near Providence Hospital, the UAA Health Sciences Building opened in 2011, and is home to medical science classes and labs of all sorts. The other end, the north end, lands on the third floor of a new engineering building. Not only did the doors just open this semester, but the college welcomed a new dean. Here's a bit about both.

First, the person. Fred Barlow arrived about six weeks ago after nine years at the University of Idaho in Moscow. There he chaired the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and helped launch a microelectronics research lab, called NGeM, or the Next Generation Microelectronics Research Center, with a large gift from Micron Industries. The firm also endowed a professorship and he was the first recipient.

Graduates and undergraduates at NGeM focus on the chip development process, from theoretical mathematical fundamentals to design to packaging. Think of your smart phone, and say thank you for long battery life and other convenient qualities you never have to worry about.

So what got Barlow from those comfortable professional achievements in Idaho, north to Alaska-complete with state fiscal drama and dramatic climate change?

Well, chalk up a little vacation more than a decade ago spent fishing on the Kenai, plus the sense that he was ready for a new challenge. Serving as an academic dean was his next step.

Barlow said he considered the move carefully. For Idaho, he'd left roots in Georgia and Tennessee-first for graduate school at Virginia Tech and then his first research and teaching job for seven years at the University of Arkansas.

He says Idaho and Alaska face some of the same challenges - small population and big geography. Idaho and many other states already have lived through tumbling state support and a national recession. He's stared down a tough budget before.

No, none of those realities deterred him, he says, because of UAA's location in well-populated Anchorage, the state's emergence in evolving arctic issues, and the engineering college's growing capacity to solve problems in Anchorage, in Alaska, and in Third World environments locally and globally.

"I am interested in where this university is headed," Barlow said. He likes that the university is young and has high aspirations. "There's a lot of energy here. I sensed it when I interviewed."

The tremendous growth in students turned his head, as well. UAA went from 263 engineering students less than a decade ago to 1,250 today. Enrollment numbers are still settling for this semester, but Barlow says they're about five percent beyond last fall.

An area worth evaluating, says Barlow, is professional master's degrees for local working engineers. Just since arriving, he's had inquiries for more than UAA already offers. "The question is, do we have enough and are they the right ones?" He'll spend the next year meeting industry colleagues, assessing their professional needs and finding ways university students and industry pros can collaborate. A brand new building with more than 20 labs makes those associations natural, he says.

Which brings us to part two: the building. This 81,000-square-foot facility exposes as much of the building's engineering systems as possible, from heating and ventilation to structural supports and earthquake design. A community open house is set for Sept. 10 at 4 p.m., with demonstrations in every lab.

An engineering alumnus, Mike Fierro (B.S. '89, M.S. '01), now with the firm Reid Middleton, worked as a structural engineer on a design team led by Joe Abegg and Paul Daugherty of Livingston Slone architects. The team managed to  accommodate 21 labs. They run the gamut from a software design studio to cold rooms capable of large arctic research projects at -30C, to materials testing labs-places where you can safely apply enough pressure to test breaking points.

UAA's old engineering building, which opened in 1983, is closed for refurbishing until Fall 2016, but professors and students can remember seriously cramped quarters. "There would be no place to sit," recalled Andrew Metzger, a professor who'd huddle his students around equipment so everyone could observe a test. Rarely was a seat available.

Having sophisticated labs on campus has already generated industry-testing interest, Metzger said, citing the only available strong floor in the state that has netted corporate contracts.

One local company, a manufacturer of foam core structural insulation panels, waited two years for the building to open to use its testing capacities, rather than incur the expense of sending them Outside.

All the pieces-the right infrastructure, the right faculty, the right future potential -came together for Barlow. "I didn't need this job," he said. "This was a choice. The trajectory is very strong. I believe UAA will be a very different place in 10 years."

Written by Kathleen McCoy, Office of University Advancement. Reporting help from Joe Besl.