{"id":3112,"date":"2012-10-16T16:13:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T20:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/?p=3112"},"modified":"2012-10-23T09:46:28","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T13:46:28","slug":"thomas-little-appointed-associate-dean-for-educational-initiatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/2012\/10\/16\/thomas-little-appointed-associate-dean-for-educational-initiatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Little Appointed Associate Dean for Educational Initiatives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Mark Dwortzan<\/em><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 154px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" title=\"little\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/se\/files\/2010\/02\/little.jpg\" alt=\"little Professor Thomas D.C. Little (ECE, SE) is the College of Engineering's new Associate Dean for Educational Initiatives.\" height=\"217\" width=\"144\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Professor Thomas D.C. Little (ECE, SE) is the College of Engineering&#039;s new Associate Dean for Educational Initiatives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen has appointed Professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ece\/people\/faculty\/h-n\/thomas-little\/\">Thomas D.C. Little<\/a> (ECE, SE) as the College of Engineering\u2019s associate dean for  Educational  Initiatives. Little will be responsible for overseeing,  implementing,  catalyzing and designing new and existing College-wide  and cross-college  or school educational initiatives that involve  innovation in curriculum  design or course delivery in undergraduate,  graduate and professional  education programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTom has expertise and passion for emerging educational technologies  and  digital education methodologies that are anticipated to radically   impact engineering education,\u201d said Lutchen. \u201cAs associate dean, he will   advance new programs with other schools and colleges at BU, continue  to  advance our professional masters programs, oversee innovative  faculty  teaching programs and help the college navigate the impact of  digital  technologies on engineering education.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time to be involved in  education,\u201d said Little,  who has served as associate chair of both  undergraduate and graduate  studies in ECE. \u201cStudents now enter the  university adept with personal  media devices and with expectations of  constant connectivity to social  networks, search engines, streaming  media and global information  resources and peers. Like other societal  conventions in transformation,  there is a wonderful opportunity for  engineering education to adapt to  these changes to enhance and enrich  the outcomes of our program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Little succeeds Professor Donald Wroblewski (ME).  As the College\u2019s  first associate dean for Educational Initiatives,  Wroblewski  implemented the Engineers in the Real World program for  sophomores,  helped create the new Technology Innovation concentration  jointly with  the School of Management, recruited and worked with Kern  Faculty  Fellows on the ENG faculty and boosted enrollment in the  College\u2019s  suite of MEng programs from about 20 incoming students to  nearly 130  expected this fall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe did all this in an extremely collegial and  engaging fashion,\u201d  said Lutchen, \u201cand has created the scaffolds from  which Tom Little can  now help us transform engineering education for the  future creation of  societal engineers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To effect that transformation, Little will draw on extensive experience in research, outreach and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n<p>His research explores the intersection of  networking, free-space  optical communications and the \u201canywhere\u201d  computing that they enable.  For example, he is principal investigator  and associate director of the  NSF Smart Lighting Engineering Research  Center, where his work is  centered on the adaptation of novel LED-based  materials, devices and  systems for the support of health, productivity  and energy benefits. He  is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of  the Association for  Computing Machinery.<\/p>\n<p>A past winner of the College of Engineering Faculty  Service Award,  Little has participated in outreach activities such as  the BU Summer  Challenge Program, Summer Pathways and the College of  Engineering  UDesign Program. Named as a Kern Faculty Fellow in 2010 for  his work in  developing innovative ways to stimulate the entrepreneurial  mindset  among undergraduates, he is a successful entrepreneur and has  served as  an advisor to ParkWhiz, Cantina Consulting, Bytelight and  other  companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mark Dwortzan &nbsp; Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen has appointed Professor Thomas D.C. Little (ECE, SE) as the College of Engineering\u2019s associate dean for Educational Initiatives. Little will be responsible for overseeing, implementing, catalyzing and designing new and existing College-wide and cross-college or school educational initiatives that involve innovation in curriculum design or course delivery [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1500,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3250,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions\/3250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/smartlighting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}