Academic Committee

Members of the academic community had two opportunities to meet during the Spring 2005 COE in Phoenix. We discussed a number of items of interest to the academic community with most concern centered about the H.E.A.T. program and its future. Bill Abramson also expressed his interest in being able to obtain a list of the H.E.A.T. participating institutions as well as contact names.

There is a great deal of concern over Rand’s pricing policies and its impact on H.E.A.T. participating institutions and our ability to continue to offer CATIA to our students. These concerns were noted by David Aber and Rick Jones and along with them, the academic committee will endeavor to clarify the situation as best as possible. Additionally, prior to Buz Nowicki’s retirement, there had been a proposal to provide discounts or vouchers to H.E.A.T. school students to allow them to take CATIA certification exams at a discounted rate (target price was to be $75-80) which we would like to see carried through.

Bill Abramson would like the members of the academic community to provide content for the NewsNet. These articles need not be encyclical, but rather, can be used to bring attention to the general CATIA community to the activities, partnerships and accomplishments at our academic institutions.

The fall workshops will be in October (Oct. 10-11 for Automotive, Oct. 17-18 for Aero) and if anyone has a presentation in mind for either of these events, input is needed now for possible inclusion in either of these events. In addition, it is not too early to start thinking about Spring 2006. We need look for abstracts that will have wide appeal perhaps centering on industry/academia collaboration.

Dr. Craig Miller and Tom Crume will be responsible for the content of the COE University. This activity will be used to coordinate the many training opportunities available at COE. While most hands on training is handled by Incat, MSC and Rand, there may be some opportunity of academic institutions to collaborate with them to provide content at future conferences.

David Aber, Bill Abramson and I will form a “communication committee” to keep IBM, COE board and the academic institutions apprised of any/all issues of concern to us all.

David Aber also suggested that the academic institutions put together some type of display, perhaps a self running kiosk, displaying the activities of the academic institutions. David indicated that IBM may be willing to help with hardware. We will have to remind Bill far in advance of the conference of our desire to do this if we are interested. Please contact me with ideas and interest in this possibility.

Student volunteers at the conference has been very successful and the COE board would like to continue to have them on board. The COE board would like input as to the number of full time students coming from each school that may be interested in attending a conference in any role.

I would like to include as many individuals as possible in future communication. If you know of someone who would like to be included in my mailing list, please provide their contact information.

Jeff Maestas
Academic Process Interest Committee Co-chair