BlackboardDr. Ostrach elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Dr Simon Ostrach, Co-chair of the College’s Engineering Advisory Council, was among 208 distinguished scholars, scientists, artists, business executives, educators, and public officials who were elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the nation's leading learned society. Dr. Ostrach, Professor of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and Director of the National Center for Microgravity Research, was instrumental in the founding of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and has been active in its affairs for the last twenty years. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and served as their Home Secretary. He has sponsored a named professorship at the College, currently held by Prof. Ben Wang.
Founded in the midst of the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other leaders of the young nation, the Academy was chartered "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The Academy has numbered among its members each generation's finest minds and most influential leaders, from George Washington and Ben Franklin in the eighteenth century to Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth.
This year's new Fellows will be welcomed as members at the annual Induction Ceremony, scheduled to be held at the Academy's headquarters, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 13, 2001.
