Donohoe, Reese receive BCoE endowed positions
Two electrical and computer engineering professors have earned endowed positions within the Bagley College of Engineering.
Patrick Donohoe has been named the Paul B. Jacob Chair, and Robert “Bob” Reese has been awarded the Robert D. Guyton Chair for Teaching Excellence.
Patrick Donohoe
Donohoe is an MSU alumnus who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering in 1980 and 1982, respectively. He earned a doctorate from the University of Mississippi in 1987.
An MSU faculty member since 1986, Donohoe has been the principal or co-principal investigator on 48 funded proposals. He represented MSU at the first full-scale lightning test performed on an operational U.S. Navy ship as a result of his funded research on lightning protection for composite ships. In addition, he has also completed successful commercial and defense projects involving antennas, electromagnetic measurements, and electromagnetic pulse.
An active member of IEEE, Donohoe is the organization’s Region 3 educational activities chair. From 2001 to 2012, he served as the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Education. He held the same title with IEEE Potentials from 2002 to 2004.
Donohoe said he will use the chair’s funds to enhance BCoE’s electromagnetic-field simulation capabilities and expand the measurement capabilities of the department’s anechoic chamber.
The Paul B. Jacob Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering is named for an MSU alumnus and former faculty member. In his 43 year career at Mississippi State, Jacob served as associate head of the electrical and computer engineering department and professor emeritus.
“I had the pleasure of working with professor Paul Jacob in the final years of his academic career, while I was at the beginning of mine,” Donohoe said. “Having known him as a mentor, a role model, and a friend, being named the Paul B. Jacob Chair is an honor with truly special meaning for me.”
Robert "Bob" Reese
Reese has been named the Robert D. Guyton Chair. He plans to use the funds to promote the use of innovative, undergraduate-research practices including flipped classrooms. He explained that this type of class structure allows students to watch lecture videos before class so they can work on correlating problems and activities during class.
“A flipped classroom also is a more natural learning environment for this generation of students who are used to perusing YouTube videos for tips on various subjects,” Reese said.
Reece also plans to employ collaborative-learning tools, which give students access to more textual and graphical collaboration.
“A monthly fee buys access to a set of virtual ‘rooms’ accessible by a browser,” Reese said, “A student can upload documents and images to then ‘scribble’ on with various graphical tools.”
This endowed funding will also allow active learning, which Reese said provides a mixture of short lectures and in-class activities to help keep students engaged the entire class period.
Since joining the Mississippi State faculty in 1988, Reese has won the university’s John Grisham Master Teacher Award as well the electrical and computer engineering department’s Outstanding Educator Award for the electrical and computer engineering department.
Reese has published four books and four book chapters focusing on topics such as microcontrollers, microprocessors and the anatomy of a silicon compiler. A second edition of a book Reese co-authors is scheduled for publication in December 2013. Additionally, he was granted a U.S. Patent for the “Method of Early Evaluation in Micropipeline Processors” in 2006.
Reese holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana Tech University. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees in the same field from Texas A&M University in 1982 and 1985, respectively.
Mississippi State’s third largest college, by enrollment, the Bagley College of Engineering has 31 endowed chairs and professorships. It is composed of eight academic departments, which administer 10 bachelor’s and 12 master’s degree programs, as well as six doctoral programs, including a doctorate of engineering that offers seven different concentration areas.
For more information about the Bagley College of Engineering, visit www.bagley.msstate.edu. More information about the department of electrical and computer engineering can be found at www.ece.msstate.edu.
Mary Kate McGowan | Bagley College of Engineering
