I'm excited to learn about all aspects of CIAN's education programs and look forward to being part of the CIAN team. I invite you to contact me with any questions or suggestions.
In my role as education evaluator, I will help the team to measure the learning outcomes of the curriculum, to document the benefits to students of being part of collaborative research, and to gain perspective from industry contacts about what they would like to see in our graduates.
A little about my background: I'm originally from Nogales, Arizona. I've been doing evaluations for many (>25) years and completed my PhD in Educational Psychology in 1996. I have also coordinated science and Honors outreach programs, served as an academic advisor, and taught courses in evaluation, program planning and learning. I volunteer in the Tucson community in animal-assisted therapy and serve on the board of the Arizona Evaluation Network and several "topical interest groups" (TIGs) of the American Evaluation Association (e.g., Organizational Learning & Evaluation Capacity Building, Environmental Program Evaluation). My undergraduate degree was in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

Allison
Allison L. Titcomb, Ph.D.
Education Evaluation Specialist
NSF Research Center for Integrated Access Networks
College of Optical Sciences
The University of Arizona
520-626-2522
atitcomb@optics.arizona.edu
www.cian-erc.org

CIAN is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. John W. Wissinger to the Professional Staff of the Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), an NSF Engineering Research Center. As Associate Director for Industry Collaboration, Dr. Wissinger will be responsible for establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships between CIAN Faculty and Student Researchers and Industry. He will help facilitate, in a liaison capacity, the expansion of CIAN's Industry Advisory Board and making relevant industry collaborations with the areas of research and education.

Dr. Wissinger is an accomplished and experienced engineer and manager, with a diverse background in product development and business models. He most recently worked at Veeco Instruments (as VP/GM), a global public company manufacturing process equipment, analytic instrumentation, and metrology tools for nanotechnology applications. Prior to that time, he worked for NP Photonics (VP Engineering), a venture-backed startup engineering micro-fiber optical amplifiers and fiber lasers, and for Alphatech Inc. (Division Manager, Signal & Image Processing), a private company which was acquired as BAE Systems Advanced Information Technology Division, where he developed specialized algorithms and software products. Dr. Wissinger received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Rice University, and his PhD in EECS from MIT.

The National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship on Clean Energy for Green Industry at UCLA (CGI) is a 3 year fellowship^* that provides a $30,000 stipend/year , tuition, fees, travel stipend to participate in a scientific conference or workshop, internships and international experience. The fellowship will develop leaders in environmental energy through integrated research and coursework in the science, business and policies of clean technology. Completion of a 1-3 month cross-disciplinary internship with an industrial partner or national laboratory is encouraged.

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One of the major initiatives within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is the Broadband USA program (www.broadbandusa.gov). Approx. $10 billion are made available to improve Americas broadband infrastructure - the middle and last mile (also known as the "aggregation" and "access" network) to families, schools, libraries, hospitals, emergency response units, and many more in order to provide them with state-of-the-art internet access especially in currently unserved and/or underserved areas. Grants are awarded on a competitive basis to project proposals which provide the highest merit with respect to the goals of the program. CIAN faculty actively participated in the review process in order to support fast, efficient, and effective funding of these projects.

View specific questions and answers on topics related to ERCWeb at the ERCWeb Q and A screen.

NSF has established formal guidelines for conducting site visits to Engineering Research Centers at various stages during the life of the ERC. These guidelines have evolved over time, as have the protocols and criteria governing the reviews conducted by site visit review teams. The aim of all site visits and reviews is to strengthen each ERC and ensure that it is operating and evolving in a manner consistent with the mission and goals of the ERC Program.

The documents provided here are current, and are generally updated annually or as changes occur in NSF policy. The documents give information useful for operating an ERC, about how to prepare an Annual Report/Renewal Proposal and what it should include, about the performance criteria by which the ERCs will be reviewed and about the site visit and how to prepare for one.

Please visit

https://surveys.qrc.com/ercweb/help/ann_rpt_guide.cfm

Exciting New CIAN Public web site has been launched . please visit http://www.cian-erc.org !!

2009 NSF ERC Annual Meeting and Student Retreat (www.erc-assoc.org)

December 2-4, 2009

Location: Hyatt Regency Bethesda Hotel (http://www.bethesda.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp)

One Bethesda Metro Center (7400 Wisconsin Ave),
Bethesda, Maryland, USA 20814
Tel: +1 301 657 1234 Fax: +1 301 657 6453