On Jan. 16, the College of Engineering’s new dean, Royce Bowden, will take over.

“What I’m excited about the most is meeting the faculty and students,” Bowden said. 

He plans to meet individually with each faculty member in the engineering department to get to know them and understand the best way to conduct operations.

“I also plan to add new faculty and staff positions to protect and expand the undergraduate program, as well as meet with potential benefactors to enable that expansion,” Bowden said.

He beat out two competitors for the top spot in WSU engineering: Atam Dhawan of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Arup Maji of the University of New Mexico.

Bowden won the position because of his success at generating resources and increasing enrollment at Mississippi State University.  He said he reversed a trend of declining undergraduate enrollment in MSU engineering to a 55 percent increase over his six years as head of MSU’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Bowden will remain associate dean of engineering at Mississippi State University through the semester. 

Bowden is married and has one son who’s in high school and one son in college. 

“No, he’s not an engineering major,” he said. 

When Bowden moves to Wichita in December, his wife and sons will stay behind until their house is sold. 

“It’s a big transition, but we don’t really see any downside to it,” he said.

Bowden worked at Texas Instruments early in his career. Texas Instruments is widely known as the company that invented the hand-held calculator. Bowden’s job there in the early 1980s involved developing missiles for the U.S. Navy.

Bowden earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, and his master’s and Ph.D. from Mississippi State University.

When Bowden takes over at WSU engineering, Interim Dean Vishwanath Prasad will return to his previous position at the University of North Texas.