Our graduating students went out in style this past Friday! First, we held the final presentations of our Interdisciplinary Senior Design Projects, sponsored by Raytheon, EMC, MACOM, United Technologies, and Vibram. One observer, from a company planning to sponsor a project next year, commented “Overall, I was very impressed with the student’s work. Actually, I was stunned by some of it. They should all be commended for their work.” Thank you to all the faculty advisors and our sponsors for making this pilot program a tremendous success. We concluded our day by presenting Department and College awards at our Graduating Student Reception at the ICC. Ellen Gerardi of Civil Engineering was awarded the Dean’s Service Award while Mike Kerouac (Plastics, 1983), President of EMC Global Product Operations, and David Preusse (ME, 1985), President of Wittmann Battenfeld, were inducted into the Francis Academy of Distinguished Engineers. Thank you to all who attended, and Ms. Nancy Ficarra for organizing a splendid evening. On a final note, it is a good time to gauge our incoming class, as the May 1 deadline for deposits has passed. To date, we have 604 prepaid students, a 16 percent increase over last year. The students have an average GPA of 3.69 and SAT of 1226 (essentially the same as last year) and the class is 18.7% female (compared with 14.2% last year). See you at graduation! — Joe Hartman