Portrait of Dr. Jones

Folks,

It is my great pleasure to let you know that your alma mater the Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Florida is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the department later this year. As you may or may not know, in 1959 Dr. Fred Rhines left Carnegie Mellon University with a dream to come to the University of Florida and establish a program based on all areas (metallurgy, ceramics etc.) of Materials Science and Engineering. This was a novel idea at the time that was just being explored nationally and UF was one of the first MSE programs in the country. From these modest beginnings, the UF-MSE Department has grown to be one of the highest ranked (8th) and largest programs in the country with 31 faculty members and over 430 students. We are planning on celebrating this 50th year anniversary Oct 2 and 3, 2009 here at the University of Florida. To date we have graduated ~1900 total students (BS, MS, PhD) and you are one of them. We are inviting all graduates and their families to come back for a 50th year reunion/celebration. The plans are still being finalized but I expect there will be a reception Friday night Oct. 2 followed by a program Saturday including talks about the history of the department, the latest research, tours of new labs, visit the SWAMP and a banquet Saturday night. We are also planning on unveiling a large stone wall withh the engraved names of all of the graduates on it for the first 50 years (every one of you). We are extremely excited about doing this right as you helped make this the best department in the country. We will get you more information as it develops.

In the meantime I need to ask your help. We want to connect with as many graduates as possible and of course our records are never complete (Gibbs and his entropy). To help us connect with everyone we have set up both a LinkedIn Web site and a Facebook page for the department. If you take a minute and go to one of these and sign up then we can be sure to get you all the information in a timely fashion. Here is where you can help. If you have any email addresses for former classmates or alumni of the department please forward this on to them and encourage them to sign up on either of the two websites. I apologize if some people get duplicate emails but it is the only way I can think of to connect with as many folks as possible.

In addition we are collecting stories from our graduates on their experiences in the department. If interested, please visit our Web site to upload an audio file of a story of the department or to listen to others telling their stories. This is just starting but should be a fun way to share memories. If you have a small digital recorder, then record your story (1-5 minutes) and then upload the audio file on the webpage.

This is a great milestone in the history of the department and a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with many of your friends from college. I hope you can plan on coming back to UF to join us this fall.

All the best and Go Gators!!

Kevin