New interim associate dean named in Clemson University’s largest college
July 21, 2014
Dr. John Gowdy brings ‘wealth of experience’ to job
Dr. John Gowdy has been named interim associate dean for undergraduate studies in Clemson University’s College of Engineering and Science.
Gowdy, who has been at Clemson for 43 years, has most recently served as undergraduate program coordinator in the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
As associate dean, Gowdy will oversee undergraduate curriculum, including final approval for new courses and major changes to existing courses. The college has more than 5,400 undergraduates.
“Dr. Gowdy is an impeccable administrator and scholar,” said the college’s dean, Anand Gramopadhye.
“He brings a wealth of experience to this job. He has served as department chair and, more recently, as undergraduate program coordinator for one of the country’s largest undergraduate programs in electrical and computer engineering.”
Gowdy is filling the vacancy that was created when the former associate dean, Randy Collins, stepped aside to become the college’s executive director of academic initiatives.
Gowdy is founder and director of the Speech and Audio Processing Laboratory at Clemson. He and his students have worked on numerous projects in speech processing.
Projects have involved speech recognition, audio-visual speech recognition, speaker recognition, speech coding, speech synthesis and analysis of foreign-language sounds.
Researchers worldwide have used an audio-visual speech recognition database that was developed in the lab that Gowdy oversees. The database is called the CAUVE, which stands for Clemson University Audio Visual Experiments.
Gowdy received a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. He received a master’s degree in 1968 and a doctorate degree in 1971, both in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Gowdy has served two stints as chair of the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“I will do my best to continue the excellent performance that Dr. Randy Collins brought to this position,” Gowdy said.
A committee will begin a search in the fall for a permanent associate dean.
