The University of Kansas

Alabama prof named dean of engineering

Stuart R. Bell, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Vehicle Technologies at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, has been named the new dean of the School of Engineering at KU.
Bell will succeed Carl E. Locke as dean on Aug. 1. Locke, whose 16-year tenure as dean is the second-longest in school history, will remain at KU as a faculty member in the chemical and petroleum engineering department.
Bell, who earned a bachelor of science degree in nuclear engineering and master of science and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University, joined the Alabama faculty in 1986. He has been chair of the mechanical engineering department since 1995. As chair, his department’s graduate program has become the largest in Alabama’s engineering college, research funding has increased eightfold and the department has reformed its undergraduate curriculum. Bell also conceived and founded the advanced vehicle technologies center in 1998. The center has attracted more than $7 million in research support.
Among his many professional awards, Bell received the Meritorious Service Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Internal Combustion Engine Division, in 1995 and the T. Morris Hackney Faculty Leadership Award, College of Engineering, University of Alabama, in 2001.
The KU School of Engineering includes 100 faculty members, 10 fields of undergraduate study and 15 graduate degree programs. In fall 2001, the school admitted 1,633 undergraduate students and 679 graduate students into its programs.