The recent drop in national rankings for the graduate program in the College of Engineering could be attributed to the national community being unfamiliar with the college, a candidate for dean of the college said Monday.

“I am not familiar with your College of Engineering prior to doing my homework,” said Stella Pang, associate dean of graduate education and international programs for the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

“In order for people to recognize the good elements you have here, they have to know it. And to know it, we have to do our job to make sure they know it.”

Pang addressed the issue of the college’s relations with the external community as well as others, in front of approximately 40 faculty and staff members at Lee Liu Auditorium in Howe Hall.

“Excellence” was the word of the day for Pang, as her presentation stressed the need for excellence in all aspects of the college — specifically education, research and service.

One of the aspects is diversity.

“Diversity is excellence,” Pang said.

“We can’t afford not to be diverse.”

Along with the need for diverse students and faculty comes the need for excellence in recruiting high quality students and faculty, she said.

“It’s easy to say students will come to us,” Pang said. “But very often that doesn’t happen. In order to get the best students, we need to attract them.”

In addition to retaining and attracting students, she stressed support for faculty as well.

“There should never be a situation where a junior faculty member joins us and finds they aren’t able to succeed,” Pang said. “We need to make sure junior faculty aren’t overloaded, but put them in a situation where they can establish themselves.”

George Burnet, distinguished professor of chemical engineering, said he was glad to see that the search committee chose a well-qualified female candidate.

“I really liked that Dr. Pang stressed excellence in not just education, but research and service,” Burnet said. “You really do need all three of those.”

Despite being impressed with her qualifications, careful preparation and good organization, he said he was disappointed Pang failed to address the issue of limited state funding.

“What’s on everyone’s minds is how to maintain quality with limited financial resources,” said Burnet, interim dean of the college from 1994 to 1995. “How do you achieve that excellence when we have a pattern of reduced funding for several years?”

However, Pang said, departments need to focus more on obtaining external resources from the federal government, the industry and private donors.

“Departments did not used to be active in seeking money from the community,” Pang said. “But departments have the closest interaction with the industrial complex and the private sector through connections they have with alumni who graduated from the department and their work through research.”

Dave Holger, associate dean of the College of Engineering, said he was impressed with Pang and the other two candidates who have presented so far.

“In general terms, she identified the right things, [and] spoke about the right mechanisms for how to compensate for reduced state funding,” Holger said. “She was pretty much on target.”