Fall 1998

Teamwork and Partnership Are Key to Rajala's Success

Dr. Rajala

Accepting tough challenges comes naturally for Dr. Sarah Rajala, associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Engineering. From earning degrees in a male-dominant field in the early 70s to becoming the first woman professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State, she is a person who doesn't turn away from an uphill journey.

Her most recent challenge comes in leading the academic affairs office for the College of Engineering. Again, she is the trailblazer as the first woman to hold an associate dean position in the college, and after two years on the job, she has already begun to make her mark on how the college serves its students. Her challenge in this new office is to maintain and expand the successful programs already in place, such as the minority engineering program, while developing new programs that address other issues, such as recruiting new students and supporting women engineering students. Since stepping into the position in August 1996, Rajala has made changes that have increased enrollment, emphasized women students' needs and changed freshman student education.

"Coming to academic affairs was a natural progression for me," says Rajala. "As a teacher and a professor, I have always been interested in student issues. I have always wanted to find better ways to help students learn and ways to help faculty better teach students. My primary interest is to make sure that the students we admit receive the best education possible."

To accomplish her goals, she has made partnership and teamwork an important part of her administrative style. She believes that teamwork is especially important in the academic affairs office because success is dependent upon the work of many people, including the faculty, the students and the administration.

"We have to work together to accomplish our goals," says Rajala. "Our office has to work as a team with our faculty and with other colleges within the university to develop programs that support and improve our educational environment."

Developing a program that enriches freshman education and improves retention has been one of Rajala's most important goals. It is a project that has required teamwork within the college and development of partnerships with industry and other colleges on campus. By incorporating the best of many successful experimental programs tested during the past few years, Rajala's team has developed a freshman course that combines math, chemistry and physics concepts with engineering, laboratories with hands-on activities and experiences with design problems that build on concepts learned in class. This fall for the first time, the college is piloting the new Introduction to Engineering experience to all 1100 engineering freshman.

"We have taken what we considered to be the strengths of the earlier pilot programs and integrated them into this new introduction to engineering experience to provide students with what we hope is a better understanding and appreciation of what engineering is all about," says Rajala. "Our biggest challenge was finding a way to scale up the program to serve 1100 students. Quite often a program is feasible when it serves a small group, but it can become too expensive or unwieldy for larger numbers. We had to find a way to maintain quality and control costs when expanding the program to the full freshman class."

While change is often a part of a new administration, Rajala remains committed to supporting programs that have proven successful in the past. She does not believe in reinventing the wheel. She looks for ways to expand existing programs that work to a broader population.

"We have a very strong minority engineering program," says Rajala. "I am committed to continue strengthening that program because it can be beneficial across the board. We have maintained our status among the top engineering schools in minority enrollment, and I want us to continue to be a leader in that area. Other successful programs that we will continue to support are the summer programs for high school students. The Summer Introduction to Engineering, or SITE, program and the summer program in nuclear engineering are very beneficial recruiting tools that provide high school students an opportunity to see what it means to be an engineer."

The success of the minority program has given her ideas about ways to increase the support for women engineering students. Her experiences as an engineering student in the 1970s have made her deeply committed to finding ways to encourage and support women students in engineering fields.

"I was the only woman in my class in electrical engineering and one of only a few women in engineering at Michigan Technological University," says Rajala. "In the early 1970s, women engineering students were not taken very seriously and there was very little academic support for us as students. Our college has not had a focus on women in engineering, so one of the things I am interested in doing is establishing more of a focus on women in engineering in partnership with the minority program so we can look for ways to recruit, retain and encourage a diverse population of students. Part of the changes that I have implemented since taking this position, and one of my priorities, was to identify and hire someone who could coordinate and direct women in engineering program activities."

Rajala has also focused on the issue of recruitment for the college. In the early 1990s, engineering colleges across the country experienced a decline in enrollment. As a result, competition for the best students has increased, and to meet that challenge, the College of Engineering established a new position focused on recruiting top students to NC State. The resulting climb in enrollment has moved the college back to target levels. Programs initiated by the new recruiter have resulted in an increase in the quality of students enrolling in the college. The average grade point average for entering freshman is now 4.01.

Rajala attributes much of the success in academic affairs to the programs that support and encourage students and the efforts of her staff and the faculty to create a good educational environment for the students.

"My goal is to maximize the potential of all our students by focusing on our strengths--the strengths of our faculty, our students and our support programs," says Rajala.

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