The Iowa State Provost’s office’s loss will be the electrical engineering department’s gain this fall when Robert M. Anderson resumes teaching, Provost John Kozak said.

Anderson said that teaching undergraduates offers several benefits. “The traditional undergraduate university student is the most fun, challenging and clearly the most rewarding group to work with,” he said. “They are discovering themselves as human beings, preparing for their first careers, and I find that very exciting.”

Anderson became interested in teaching when he was the student instructor of an upper-level lecture course. He said he wants to return to that environment.

“It’s instant gratification to see a student grasp a concept and to help others understand the electrical engineering field,” he said.

Anderson has served as Iowa State’s vice provost for the 5 years. Kozak said Anderson has impacted the university’s extension programs.

“What he has done is completely reposition Iowa State’s extension services,” Kozak said. “Dr. Anderson put at the disposal of every county extension personnel modern equipment to enable access to Iowa State and other land grant universities, and I think that represents a major step forward.”

Some of the changes under Anderson’s direction include technologically connecting all 99 of Iowa’s county extension services and establishing EXNET, an on-line information link to other universities. Such technology proved helpful during the floods of 1993, when many people sought assistance from local extension agencies.

“Dr. Anderson focused on making information available to people with serious problems because of the flooding and material on how they could cope both in their professional and personal lives,” Kozak said.

“ISU is networked in a way that is unlike other institutions in the state of Iowa, and consequently we have a way of getting information to the most local levels,” Kozak added. “But it’s not just about hard data. It’s interaction with people as well.”

Anderson joined the faculty at Purdue University in 1967, where he taught and conducted research. There he was highly regarded as a teacher, consequently receiving several awards. He was also instrumental in Indiana’s state-wide master’s program in electrical engineering.

In addition, Anderson spent 11 years at General Electric and was responsible for cross-departmental technical education and training of 50,000 GE staff. There he also negotiated and conducted technological information exchange agreements with major companies world-wide. In 1990, Anderson moved from GE to Iowa State.

Anderson says he plans to spend this fall investigating the contemporary research in his field. “I’ll be doing a lot of reading, a lot of research, catching up on the state-of-the-art information,” he said.