Appendix A
Biographies of Committee Members
Richard Schwartz (chair), codirector of the Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University, joined the faculty of the School of Electrical Engineering at Purdue in 1964. He became a full professor and assistant head for instruction in 1972. After serving as dean of the Purdue Schools of Engineering from 1995 to 2001, he returned to the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Schwartz has been a consultant to a number of corporations as well as chairman of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for the National Center for Photovoltaics. Dr. Schwartz has served on the boards of directors of the National Electrical Engineering Department Heads Association, the International Committee for the European Union Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, and the International Engineering Consortia. He was general chairman of the 23rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference and a member of the International Committee for the World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion. In 2001, he chaired the National Research Council Committee for the Assessment of NASA’s Solar Power Investment Strategy, and in 2004, he chaired a panel to evaluate the Army’s basic research program in electronics. He received a B.S.E.E. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an S.M.E.E. and Sc.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ashok Agrawal, professor and chair of the Engineering and Technology Department, St. Louis Community College, is responsibilities for the A.S. transfer program in engineering technology and A.A.S. and certificate programs in civil, construction, biomedical, electrical, electronics, computer, mechanical, manufacturing, plastics, quality, and telecommunications engineering technologies. He is currently involved in the establishment of an Advanced Manufacturing Center in Florissant Valley. Dr. Agrawal has been a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Engineering Technology Division (ETD) for more than 20 years and was awarded the 1996 Fredrick J. Berger Award for Excellence in Engineering Technology Education by ASEE. For two years, he was vice chair of the Technology Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), and he is currently a member of the advisory boards of several National Science Foundation-funded projects to improve engineering technology educational programs. Dr. Agrawal is also a member of the National Research Council Board on Engineering Education. He holds M.S.
degrees in metallurgical engineering and mining engineering from the University of Kentucky and a B.S. in metallurgical engineering from Nagpur University in India.
Sandra Begay-Campbell is a regent for the University of New Mexico and former executive director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the number of American Indian scientists and engineers. Ms. Campbell is also a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where she heads projects in the Renewable Energy Program. After earning a B.S.C.E. from the University of New Mexico, Ms. Campbell worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She then earned an M.S. in structural engineering from Stanford University. She subsequently worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ms. Campbell is a member of the Board of Directors for Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN). In 2000, she was a recipient of the Stanford University Multicultural Alumni of the Year Award and the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Women from the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women.
Legand Burge is dean of the College of Engineering at Tuskegee University. Dr. Burge’s research focuses on distributed computing, especially global resource management in large-scale distributed systems using low-cost commodity hardware and the design and development of large-scale, nondedicated, heterogeneous software distributed shared memory systems; he is currently the director of the Distributed Systems Research Group. Dr. Burge’s previous research includes consistency management in distributed databases and message-passing libraries for distributed parallel computing, which involved the design and development of an actor-based message-passing and thread-migration package for Java, which was used to design a campus-wide nondedicated metacomputer that distributed and performed load balancing of computations based on CPU cycle stealing.
Larry Hall, leader of S&K Electronics, a tribally owned firm, has overseen threefold growth in the company and the spin-off of an IT company. S&K has had four Phase I and two Phase II SBIR grants. Mr. Hall has also been involved with businesses and business development on the Flathead Reservation in Montana for more than 30 years. He received his undergraduate degree from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and pursued further studies in accounting and business management at Shalish Kootenai College in Pablo, Montana, and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Mr. Hall is the current president of the Native American Manufacturer Network, a nonprofit business organization, and a member of the Montana Board of Research and Commercialization Technology. He is a past member of the National Advisory Board for the Small Business Administration, past chairman of the Montana Manufacturer Extension Center Advisory Board, and a past member of the Minority Business Resource Advisory Committee for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Helen Klassen, earned a bachelor’s degree from Minnesota State University-Moorhead (MSUM) and a doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University. Employed in the Counseling Center at MSUM since 1989, Dr. Klassen teaches classes in Native American Studies and introductory courses in multicultural studies. The founder and president of the White Earth Tribal and Community College, Dr. Klassen has helped to create a space for innovation and learning in her community, offering a new generation of students the chance to realize their dreams. Dr. Klassen is Assistant to the Chippewa tribal chairperson.
Henrietta Mann (formerly Whiteman) earned a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. She is a full-blood Cheyenne enrolled with the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and has served on their Business Committee. Dr. Mann was the first one to fill the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University, Bozeman. For 30 years, she held administrative posts and/or taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Graduate School of Education of Harvard University; University of Sciences and Arts, Chickasha, Oklahoma; and Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas. In 1986, she was deputy to the assistant secretary of Indian affairs/director of the Office of Indian Education Programs, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior. In 1991 and 1992, she was national coordinator of the American Indian Religious Freedom Coalition in the Washington, D.C., offices of the New York-based Association on American Indian Affairs. In 1983, Dr. Mann was selected Cheyenne Indian of the Year, and in 1987, she was honored as the National American Indian Woman of the Year. In 1991, Rolling Stone named her one of the 10 leading professors in the nation. The National Women’s History Project has featured her as one of five 20th Century Women Educators on its poster series.
