Our fourth year of fundraising for the house expansion is almost over. I'd like to thank everyone who has already donated, or who is planning to make a contribution at Founder's Day. We need to raise $15,000 this year (ending this Founder's Day 2000) in order to stay on target; as of this writing I have recorded pledges of $7,162.47, and donations of $5,510.47. I am confident that collections around Founder's Day will be, shall we say, hefty.

Grand total pledges for the campaign are now $26,037.88, and grand total donations are $22,281.88. Several people were kind enough to make extra pledges for previous years; I really appreciate the help.

I hope to see a lot of you at Founder's Day this year, but allow me to make a special plea to those of you who cannot attend. Are you too far away, have other commitments, or have lots of kids to chase around now? A $470 contribution to this fund is a great way to say "I'm sorry I couldn't make it to Founder's Day this year."

Please, give till it hurts - we really need your help.

YITB,
Ernie Daniels, EI 391

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Elisa and Scott Smith Move to Idaho!

I wanted to let all of you know that I'm no longer living in Troy. After 6 trips and 3 offers, I accepted a tenure track position in the EE department at Boise State University. The drive out was uneventful, even though Scott was driving the truck with the camper in the bed with the canoe strapped on top and I was driving the Forester with two cats and towing the sailboat with the windsurfer tied on that. We have no stories like Bumper and Rob do of moving across country.

My department is small with only 8 EE faculty. The whole engineering program here is only 3 years old and it seems like it is heading forward in good directions with lots of momentum. The program doesn't have a graduate program yet, but will start an MS program next fall. Even with just undergrads they have lots of faculty research and the university backs it up with time and equipment (they even have a clean room and an electron scanning microscope) and they get a lot of local industry support. I'm teaching 1.5 courses: Signals and Transforms (sophomore EE and Geophysics) and sharing teaching of Intro to Engineering with the department head. I like them both.

Scott seems to like it here too. My dept. chair paid to fly him out here in early June to try and find a job (before I accepted the offer here in hopes that I would) and he did find an adjunct position teaching a Friday night course in Economics here at BSU. Then this summer he was offered the opportunity to teach the lab to my Signals & Transforms course - once an engineer, always an engineer. So Scott has 2 courses this term. Now after talking with the Econ chair he will teach three Econ courses next spring (and he says he wants to do the EE lab again now that he's getting the labs developed) and he will be applying for the tenure track opening they have in the BSU Econ dept for Fall 2000. Not perfect, but Scott is happy with the situation.

As to Boise outside of school, it is a nice city. I have a view of the mountains outside my window (I have a window office finally but it is in the smallest size category and when the new engineering building opens in January, the faculty offices have windows facing away from the mountains). Boise proper is about 200,000 people and the metro area is still under 400,000. The city is very bicycle friendly with many roads having bicycle lanes drawn on the pavement. There is a bike path along the river called the Greenbelt (which is located right next to campus which is smack downtown) that goes quite a ways to a reservoir. We live about 2 miles from campus on the SE side of the city. All city busses are free with a BSU ID and one line goes by both our apartment and campus which I take home on Thursday nights as Scott and I drive in together and he leaves before my Intro to Engineering meeting is done.

Two Sundays ago we went to Bruneau Dunes State Park which has the tallest sand dune in North America (~400 ft). We climbed up to the top of it then went swimming in the lake at its base, then went canoeing around the lake. I'm not going to let Scott talk me into going walking or hiking in the desert when it is 90+ degrees out ever again :-). This past weekend we went for a 20+ mile bike ride along the Boise River Greenbelt Saturday and then drove out to Idaho City, Stanley and Ketchum (any one for a Sun Valley ski trip this winter?) on Sunday. We'll go canoeing and bicycling this weekend. Lots of great outdoor stuff to do here.

We are planning to make it to Troy for Founders Day. Right now Scott doesn't have a Friday night class next term. We hope to see you all in April. If you're heading to, or through Boise, give us a call.

YITB,
Elisa

3/31/00
We have some news. Things are still going well here in Boise. My Tenure Progress Review Committee gave me a great evaluation and my contract was renewed for another year. I'm thus another year closer to Tenure. Scott is making progress towards getting a tenure track position, but it looks like Fall 2001 is the soonest we can expect that. In the meantime he is in high demand to teach as an adjunct and everyone is very satisfied with him. We closed on a house a week ago and have spent the past week moving everything in.

YITB, Elisa and Scott