College of Engineering wins prestigious award

By Miguel Angel Rodriguez Garibay
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer

The College of Engineering won an award from the Hispanic Engineer National Achievements Awards Conference (HENAAC) placing Cal State Long Beach in a top spot among four other top national universities including Stanford.

Associate Deans of Engineering Sandra Cynar and Anastasios Chassiakos accepted the award on behalf of CSULB at the Luminaries Luncheon in Pasadena, which was sponsored by HENAAC and Boeing on Oct. 8, 2004. This is the first time CSULB has won the "Best Southern California Collaborative Partnership with the Boeing Company" award.

The HENAAC has been around since 1989. It is the first national initiative to honor Latino engineers and it has awarded people from both public and private sectors.

Presently, no funding or increase in scholarships has accompanied the award. However, an e-mail statement released by Kristina M. Ruidas, university relations manager HENAAC, sounds promising. "We are committed to remaining involved with your university and would like to establish a more formal partnership between our organizations." She also said, "Our 2005 HENAAC scholarship applications are distributed in January and we would like to increase the amount of applicants from CSULB."

However, Chassiakos said the event has created positive notoriety for the College of Engineering because many important elements of the local industrial community such as Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, Honda, Toyota and Northrop-Grumman was present. "Receiving this award was very important for us because we received a lot of publicity in the presence of major employers," he said.

The other sponsor, Boeing, has had a special relationship with CSULB since the ‘80s. Boeing, which has a facility in Long Beach has had a collaborative partnership with CSULB since the company was known as McDonnell-Douglas.

Cynar, said the "Best Southern California Collaborative Partnership" status is due to the fact that Boeing has a laboratory in the College of Engineering which is staffed by Boeing employees who directly supervise CSULB students.

Julio Juarez, a 28-year-old aerospace engineering graduate student works in this facility and is very satisfied with the technical experience he has received. "I've gotten to [have] relationships with people from the industry."

CSULB has also been considered a "Focus School" by Boeing since March 2000 due to the fact that the institutions are geographically close. Another factor is the significant presence of CSULB graduates at the Boeing facility. There is a "Focus School" list of 72 worldwide universities which are considered as "key for one reason or another to the mission of the company," said Hamid Hefazi, professor and chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In terms of projects and donations Hefazi said, "You are treated preferentially once you are a key school."

Benefits of this status have included funding from Boeing of about $100,000 a year for the past three years and funding for projects such as the $1.5 million Center for Advanced Technology and Support for the Aerospace Industry (CATSAI).

According to Cynar, the College of Engineering has made significant contributions to the advancement of Latino engineers. Recently, CSULB was named 10th in the Hispanic Outlook in Annual Higher Education annual Top 100 listing of national universities that conferred the most bachelor's degrees upon Latinos. Another benefit is the presence of active chapters of Society of Hispanic Engineers and Mexican American Engineers and Scientists. Chassiakos also said, "A lot of Hispanic students attend the College of Engineering and are getting good jobs when they graduate, so we are again providing a good service."