Burrus Slated for Dean’s Post

Burrus Slated for Dean’s Post
RICE NEWS OFFICE
April 23, 1998

President Malcolm Gillis and Provost David Auston announced today that they
will recommend to the Rice Board of Governors that Sidney Burrus, professor
of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, be named dean of the university’s
George R. Brown School of Engineering effective July 1, 1998.

Burrus holds the Maxfield and Oshman Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
chair and is director of Rice’s Computer and Information Technology Institute
(CITI).

In making the announcement, Gillis said: "The Rice career of Professor
Sid Burrus already stretches across four and a half fruitful decades. The university
is extremely fortunate that he has accepted yet another challenge: leadership
of the George R. Brown School of Engineering. My single regret is that this
extraordinarily capable teacher will have less time available for the classroom."

Burrus received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Rice, and his Ph.D.
from Stanford University. He taught at the Navy Nuclear Power School in New
London, Conn., and was a lecturer at Stanford in the early 1960s before joining
the Rice faculty in 1965.

From 1984 to 1992 he served as chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department. In 1975 and again in 1979 he was a guest professor at the Universitaet
Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. During the summer of 1984 he was a visiting
fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge University, England, and during the academic
year 1989-90, he was a visiting professor at MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

"Sidney brings to this responsibility a strong record of achievement as
a researcher, an educator and an articulate spokesman for engineering education,"
Auston said.

"He is also a devotee and passionate advocate for the Brown School and
for Rice University. In succeeding Michael Carroll, he will build on a strong
base and, we are confident, will lead the Brown School to the next level of
excellence. Our thanks go to the search committee and to its chair, Mark Wiesner,
for conducting an outstanding search."

Throughout his career, Burrus has been honored for his work in the classroom
and in research laboratories. He received teaching awards throughout his tenure
as a faculty member at Rice. He earned a Humboldt Award in 1975, a Senior Fulbright
Fellowship in 1985, was a distinguished lecturer for the Signal Processing Society
and for the Circuits and Systems Society from 1989 through 1992, and received
the Signal Processing Society Award in 1995.

"I am truly delighted that Sidney Burrus will succeed me as dean of the
George R. Brown School of Engineering," Carroll said. "Sidney, a Rice
alumnus, after completing his doctorate at Stanford, joined the Rice faculty
and has devoted his entire professional career to serving his alma mater. He
is an outstanding scholar and a wonderful award-winning teacher. His leadership
as ECE department chair and CITI director has been effective and, indeed, inspirational.
His appointment as dean is a most appropriate next step that will be greeted
with great enthusiasm by students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of Rice."

The selection of Burrus to succeed Carroll came from an extensive search by
a committee chaired by Wiesner, professor of environmental science and engineering.

"It was a rigorous, national search that resulted in a list of both internal
and external candidates," Wiesner said. "All of them were outstanding
candidates, outstanding scholars, very well recognized, all very well qualified,
and we would have been happy to have any one of those individuals serve as dean.
I think we’re particularly lucky to have one of our own come through the search
process; I think it speaks very well for Rice. Sidney brings an intimate knowledge
of the challenges and the strengths of Rice and the engineering school. He is
an outstanding scholar, has terrific people skills, and is very familiar with
where we’ve been and where we need to go."

In addition to his teaching and research work load, Burrus is a member of the
university’s Ad Hoc Committee on General Education. He has served on advisory
and review panels for the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research
and various universities.

For related information visit the following Web site:
George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~deanengr/