The Whiting School's
Department of Mechanical Engineering has organized a
one-day symposium
and reception on Friday, Sept. 5, to pay tribute to William
Sharpe Jr., who is retiring after 25 years
as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins. In particular, Sharpe
will be honored for his role in chairing
and rebuilding the department four years after the School
of Engineering was re-established in 1979.
The symposium for Sharpe will take place in Homewood's
Mason Hall Auditorium. Nick Jones,
dean of the Whiting School, will deliver opening remarks at
8:45 a.m. Afterward, current Mechanical
Engineering faculty members will present 15-minute
technical talks related to their research. After
the symposium concludes at 3:45 p.m., a reception honoring
Sharpe will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. on the
west patio of Latrobe Hall (in the event of rain, in Mason
Hall).
Sharpe earned a doctorate in mechanics at Johns
Hopkins in 1966 and began his teaching career
at Michigan and Louisiana state universities. He received
his bachelor's and master's degrees in
mechanical engineering from North Carolina State
University.
Although engineering education at Johns Hopkins dates
back to 1914, its status as an
independent school ended in the 1960s. In 1979, the program
was re-established as the Whiting
School of Engineering. In January 1983 Sharpe was recruited
to return to Johns Hopkins to establish
and chair the school's new Department of Mechanical
Engineering.
Beginning with a single colleague from the former
Department of Mechanics, Sharpe led the re-
formation and growth of a department that now includes 18
tenured and tenure-track faculty, 13 staff
members, 18 research and adjunct faculty, 166
undergraduates, 80 full-time graduate students, 120
part-time graduate students, 23 postdoctoral fellows and 25
visiting scholars. He was department
chair from 1983 to 1988 and again from 1991 to 1997.
Sharpe, who holds the Alonzo G. Decker Chair in
Mechanical Engineering, is a fellow of the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society
for Experimental Mechanics and has been
the recipient of several major professional honors. Since
1993, he has been a member of the principal
professional staff of the university's Applied Physics
Laboratory. His recent research has focused on
the measurement of the mechanical properties of tiny
specimens of materials used in micro-
electromechanical systems and on high-frequency strain
measurement.