Front and Center

From a small but orderly corner suite in the building wing that houses Florida Gulf Coast University's college of business, Susan Blanchard is laying the foundation for a new engineering program. As of now, she's the only faculty member; her first students won't arrive until August and a new engineering building isn't scheduled to open until 2008.

While her temporary offices will relocate at least once before then, it's obvious that Blanchard is exactly where she wants to be.

"Being incubated in the college of business gives us access to the business community, an opportunity to learn about the area and meet its leaders," says Blanchard. "That's important for us. We'll be training a technical workforce and creating a situation where companies might want to relocate or form here. We want to be another piece of the economic engine in Southwest Florida."

Blanchard was hired as the founding director of the new school of engineering last December. Since arriving at FGCU full time in February, she, office manager Lynn See and academic adviser Mark Swearingen have initiated a national search for three core faculty members, started to design a curriculum, named one local engineer to the school's advisory board and awarded the first student scholarship.

Outreach has been a big part of Blanchard's job. Speaking engagements at local professional societies and at conferences across the country are helping the new school gain recognition. Judging from the response of local government agencies, engineering firms and interested citizens, Blanchard has landed in an area that's been ready for an engineering program for some time.

"One of the things that is so important as we try to recruit business to this area is to build an infrastructure," says Regina Smith, executive director of the Lee County Economic Development Office. "Right now, engineering companies have to bring in people from elsewhere. The program at FGCU will certainly allow us to have that talent and technical expertise in place."

Because diversifying the economy and creating jobs for a growing number of working-age residents is crucial to retaining this area's quality of life, Blanchard and the engineering program have been welcomed with open arms. "It's obvious that the county structures are very interested in us, and local engineering firms have been very generous in helping us raise money for scholarships," says Blanchard. "Every day I get phone calls and e-mails from retired engineers and educators who want to help. So I'm recruiting them."

Making connections comes naturally for Blanchard, who has the rare gift of talking technical in a gracious, friendly manner. Blanchard first entered the field of biomedical engineering, which combines traditional mechanical and electrical engineering with the human sciences, at a time when the discipline was in its infancy. A biology major at Oberlin College in Ohio, she entered Duke University as one of its first biomedical engineering graduate students.

After earning a Ph.D. in 1982, Blanchard worked for Rockwell Inter-national's environmental monitoring center before returning to Duke as a medical researcher. In 1993, she took her first teaching position at North Carolina State, where she co-authored a widely used college textbook, Introduction to Biomedical Engineering. She eventually became the school's undergraduate director and helped lead the program through the accreditation process.

Population growth, Everglades restor-ation, ongoing water management dilem-mas and a growing medical industry are local factors that demand engineering graduates who have the ability to look at old problems in new ways, say Blan-chard. "The unique thing about the three areas we offer is that they're all interdisciplinary," she notes. "Just as biomedical engineering crosses the divide between engineering and medicine, environmental engineering combines civil engineering with environmental studies, and engineering management combines engineering with business. All of our graduates are going to be very employable and very useful to the community."

At North Carolina State, Blanchard's students designed one-of-a-kind devices to help people with medical problems and disabilities, an idea she hopes to import to FGCU. In addition to community service requirements, the new program will include an engineering entrepreneurship course for students in all areas of study. Blanchard's ultimate goal is to produce students who can work with business leaders and government officials to solve some of South-west Florida's thorniest problems. "I expect that most of our graduates will find jobs with relatively small companies here," she says. "They'll have to wear several hats, know how to create business plans and know how communicate."