DELORES ETTER TO ADDRESS SMU ENGINEERING GRADUATES

DALLAS (SMU) -- Delores M. Etter, the first holder of the Office of Naval Research Distinguished Chair in Science and Technology at the U.S. Naval Academy, will give the 2002 commencement address for the SMU School of Engineering.

The ceremony will be held at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 18, in McFarlin Auditorium on the SMU campus. Approximately 71 undergraduate degrees, 112 master’s level degrees and six Ph.D. degrees are expected to be conferred.

Etter joined the electrical engineering faculty at the U.S. Naval Academy in August 2001 after serving as the deputy undersecretary of defense for science and technology from June 1998 to July 2001. In this position, she was responsible for strategic planning, budget allocation, and program execution and evaluation for the Department of Defense’s $9 billion per year science and technology program.

Prior to her government service, Etter was a tenured professor in electrical/computer engineering at the University of Colorado for nine years and the University of New Mexico for 10 years.

An internationally recognized authority on digital signal processing, Etter received her undergraduate and master’s degrees in mathematics from Wright State University and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of New Mexico.

She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Engineering Education. She also is a member of the SMU School of Engineering’s Executive Board.