Cal State Long Beach Engineering Professor Selected for Boeing Summer Fellowship


Tulin E. Mangir, an engineering and technology professor at California State University, Long Beach, has been selected to take part in the prestigious Boeing – A.D. Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship Program. She is one of just nine faculty members chosen nationwide for the eight-week program.

The goal of the Boeing program is to provide faculty with a better understanding of the practice of engineering in industry and the business realities of that practice in order to influence the content of undergraduate education in ways that will better prepare tomorrow’s graduates for the practice of engineering in a global industrial environment. It also benefits the company with the observations and feedback of the faculty members, after they are immersed in the company environment.

From June 16 through Aug. 8, Mangir will spend time at Boeing facilities in Seattle and Southern California, participating in activities commensurate with her broad expertise and experience, both industrial and academic.

"The main point of the program is to expose academics to Boeing projects so we can establish a bridge between industry and academia and be more relevant in our teaching. This is especially important for faculty who have not had a lot of experience in industry," said Mangir, a faculty member at Cal State Long Beach since 1994, where she started the network technology program and built laboratories for students with NSF funding.

For people like her, it is also what the company gets in return: an experienced technology executive who is also an academic resource. "In addition, the improved preparation of our students will ultimately better serve companies such as Boeing.

"To me, another significant aspect of the program is the chance to create opportunities for our students by establishing working relationships with local industry," she added. "I would like to establish relationships with appropriate departments with the hope of generating internship and future career opportunities for our students."

Mangir said program officials have informed her that she would be involved in projects at a level that takes advantage of her broad technical and business experience.

During the last week of the program, faculty fellows will be asked to report individually on their observations of Boeing as well as draft and present a personal plan to initiate activities aimed at improving their undergraduate education programs.

In addition, the fellows will be asked to prepare a single collaborative report that contains both their collective observations and their collective suggestions for improvements where pertinent. This report will include an executive summary that will be sent to Boeing senior executives.
"After 25 years of industrial and academic experience in multiple sectors, it gives me great satisfaction to be able to give my students relevant information and assign projects that are relevant for real-world problems in the field of engineering," Mangir pointed out. "Engineering is not learned from books alone. It is important to keep them [students] abreast of current technology, methodologies and practices, provide adequate hands-on experiences, and I am hoping this fellowship will enhance our abilities and resources in these areas. I’m looking forward to this opportunity to create benefits for our students."

Mangir has a bachelor’s degree in engineering (electrical engineering emphasis) from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), master’s degrees in solid state electronics and computer architecture from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from UCLA.

She has been a consultant to European Economic Commission (Esprit Projects), NASA (JPL and Ames) and a large number of multinationals and high technology companies such as IBM, Thompson, NEC, Nokia, Ericksson and many others.

She teaches courses on computer networks, embedded systems and systems design and integration projects. Her present research activities include the areas of Internetworking, high speed networks, network security and information assurance, mobile and wireless networks, sensor networks and high availability/security server architectures.