Dave House has frequently visited Michigan Tech and the ECE Department.

The House Family Foundation, established by retired president of Nortel Networks and former Intel executive Dave House, has donated $1 million to create an endowed professorship at Michigan Tech. The first faculty member to hold the Dave House Professorship will be Tim Schulz, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

House, who earned a BS in Electrical Engineering at Michigan Tech in 1965, is now executive chairman of Brocade Communication Systems, in San Jose, Calif. The House Family Foundation established the Dave House Endowed Professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering to retain and recruit the finest faculty in the field, as well as to support world-class research at MTU.

House has received both MTU's Board of Control Silver Medal and its Distinguished Alumni Award and serves on the Electrical and Computer Engineering Academy. In 1998, he delivered a commencement address and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Electrical Engineering by MTU.

"Dave is a perfect example of someone who's not only committed to Michigan Tech, but also invested in building the university's future," said MTU President Glenn Mroz.

House and the House Family Foundation have provided a series of donations to the electrical and computer engineering department and to Michigan Tech over the past decade. In addition to providing $250,000 toward construction of the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, he has underwritten major improvements in the department’s labs, provided computers, projection equipment and lecterns for classrooms and sponsored Enterprise activities on campus.

"In November of 2000 the faculty and staff of the electrical and computer engineering department established a goal to be ranked in the top 20 departments in the nation. My role is advise and to remove roadblocks to their success," said House. At that time, he and Schulz organized a strategic planning retreat for department faculty and staff. There they brainstormed and developed a 15-year plan, with specific goals for the first five years. Subsequently they have developed annual and semester goals for each year and regularly track their progress against these goals while periodically updating their five-year goals.

"Since 2000 I've been coming to the MTU campus two or three times a year to assist the program," House said. After systematically recreating the student labs, upgrading classrooms and launching some new initiatives, the faculty decided that the next item on the list was to attract the best students. And to do that, they had to have the best possible faculty.

"Attracting and retaining the best faculty doesn't come cheap," House notes. It would take about $100 million to give Michigan Tech the number of endowed chairs and professorships it needs to be what it can be, "and I can't do it all. Other alumni will need to help."

It's a realistic goal, according to House, because Michigan Tech has a great deal to offer both students and leading faculty members. "Michigan Tech is not your plain vanilla university, and there is so much sameness out there," he says. "Higher education is on the cusp of a huge transformation, and I think we'll see a great hunger for differentiation. Michigan Tech is unique."

"Michigan Tech isn't for everybody, but we don't need everybody. If we attract one percent of the world's top researchers to Michigan Tech, we can be among the top universities in the country."

As chair, Schulz will spearhead the ongoing improvements within the electrical and computer engineering department. "At this point, leadership is key to the program, and Tim is well equipped for this role," says House.

Dean of Engineering Robert Warrington encouraged House to endow the chair's position. "To improve our rankings, we need to reward our top faculty," Warrington says. "We want our really top, senior faculty in endowed professorships, and a chair is a good place to start, to retain and attract the best. . . .Tim has the support of the faculty and has done a great job of moving the electrical and computer engineering program forward in the direction of their strategic plan."

"I am personally grateful for this professorship and the show of support, but the department and the university will be the ultimate beneficiaries," said Schulz. "I won't hold this position forever,” he noted, “Over time, this will have a much greater effect on the department than on me. Dave's passion is leadership, so it's a natural fit for him to endow a chair's position."

Schulz came to MTU in 1992 and has served as department chair since 1999. Under his leadership, the department has developed the new BS in Computer Engineering and has tripled the size of its PhD program. His research focuses on applying statistical modeling and inference to computational problems in imaging and signal analysis. Shortly after the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, Schulz applied image processing methods to de-blur and improve images taken with the flawed telescope.

Schulz has been the principal investigator or co-principal on over $3 million in research support from numerous government agencies, including the National Science Foundation, and was given an NSF CAREER Award in 1995.

Schulz has authored more than 60 book chapters, journal publications and conference proceedings and has served as topical editor for Applied Optics and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

In addition to the time he devotes to the university, Schulz is a proud member of the Board of Directors for the Copper Country Chapter of Trout Unlimited and is, as he says, "hopelessly addicted to fly fishing for trout.”