Another excellent academic year for the department is ending, one that is marked by several important transitions.  This has been our first academic year under the semester system.  This transition was fairly smooth thanks to the hard work of many faculty and staff members.  I would like to thank in particular Philip Barry for having put an exceptional amount of effort and devotion into the coordination of the revision effort in the previous two years.

Another transition, undergone by the entire University, is the switch to the PeopleSoft entreprise system.  Everything from registration, to payroll and proposal preparation is now done online.  This transition, which is nearing completion, has not been as smooth.  I would like to thank all our staff for their patience and effort in dealing with the changes of the last two years.  The department has done quite well in dealing with the new system.  The learning process was tedious but rewarding for everyone because, in the end, the system is starting to facilitate many of our day-to-day tasks.  For example, recently faculty members from our department submitted a total of 18 proposals to NSF which had the same due date.  Prior to the entreprise system, this would have been difficult to process.

Finally, another important transition is the changing of the guard, or to be precise the changing of department leadership.  As I planned, 3-1/2 years ago, I am ending my term with this academic year, on June 19th to be exact.  The next department head is Professor Pen-Chung Yew, who has been a faculty member here since 1991.

The department has undergone an extraordinary transformation for the better in the last few years and the gains are likely to continue in the years ahead.  Significant among these transformations are the change of the image projected to the outside world and the fact that faculty and staff have come to work together as a cohesive unit toward the betterment of the department.  I was lucky during my tenure to have received exceptionally good support and help from several members of the department.  I would like to thank, in particular, all the department office staff, as well as Philip Barry, and Ahmed Naumann, without whom the department would not have functioned as smoothly.  I receive many compliments from colleagues on campus on how well organized our department is in many areas such as student advising, student records, and course scheduling, to name just a few items.  What these colleagues do not realize is that the good work has come at a time when our workload has also increased significantly due to higher enrollments, as well as higher faculty activity.

I will be taking a sabbatical leave next year and will return as a regular faculty member in Fall of 2001.  I am happy and very proud to have had the opportunity to serve the department for three of its most critical years so far.  I am confident that my successor will do very well and I urge everyone to give him her/his support.

-Yousef Saad