Executive Summary
This “living” document constitutes the Strategic Plan (SP) for the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE) at Iowa State University (ISU) of Science and Technology. This document outlines the Vision and Mission of CNDE, as well as the Plans for fulfilling the Mission objectives, and evaluation Benchmarks by which our successes are measured.
The comprehensive and integral nature of the philosophy upon which CNDE Vision is founded aims to address our long-term objectives, while enabling us to effectively navigate CNDE through local and national opportunities and constraints.
We base our Mission on the goal of being the national leader in “all things NDE”, by which to serve and empower all stake-holders in the broader NDE community.
Our Mission objectives are achieved by executing a set of comprehensive and methodical Plans. Our Plans are focused, yet remain nimble and responsive to address new technical and grand challenges, the need for educating “NDE scientists”, and to the ever-changing local and national financial and political landscapes.
All aspects of this “living” SP will be re-examined and updated (if necessary) annually.
1.0 Vision
Be the preeminent national leader in fundamental and applied science; technology; and educational innovations and engineering know-how serving the broader NDE community.
2.0 Mission
- Actively promote, develop and guide a national agenda for the future of the NDE discipline.
- Discover and translate new science to the NDE discipline.
- Develop innovative NDE technologies and transition them to the NDE end-users.
- Educate NDE experts and scientists.
- Address the broader global NDE needs and grand challenges.
3.0 Plans
Actively promote, develop and guide a national agenda for the future of the NDE discipline:
- Identify long-term drivers and opportunities, and develop game-changing new approaches.
- Develop opportunities and promote needs of the government and industry.
- Promote a unified strategy, agenda and approach for NDE, supported by academia, industry, government agencies and policy makers.
- Secure and maintain national political support for the NDE discipline.
Discover and translate new science to the NDE discipline:
- Engage the broader scientific community in order to identify and foster new ideas and research to address emerging and future NDE needs.
- Apply those ideas and research to boldly realize solutions to NDE challenges.
- Take on grand challenges in the NDE community.
Develop innovative NDE technologies and transition them to the NDE end-users:
- Address specific needs in the NDE community through innovative concepts and yet-to-be developed technologies.
- Develop NDE technologies based on the applied research.
- Be the enabler for improving NDE technology readiness level (TRL).
- Collaborate with small businesses, equipment manufacturers, industry and the government to make the technologies accessible and financially feasible.
Educate NDE experts and scientists:
- Inform and excite graduate and undergraduate students about NDE, opportunities available in the field, and the importance of NDE in engineering reliable safety critical systems and structures.
- Serve our sponsors and the NDE community by offering short courses, distance education, and open educational resources such as the nde-ed.org web site.
- Offer and promote the NDE minor to undergraduate students.
- Offer graduate coursework culminating in the graduate certificate.
- Revamp course offerings, leveraging dual listing (undergraduate and graduate), while still offering rigorous graduate courses in select areas.
- Work with campus leadership to maintain regular offerings of core NDE courses.
Address the broader global NDE needs and grand challenges:
- Collaborate.
- Disseminate discoveries.
- Realize robust solutions that address specific NDE problems.
- Engage at the global level in addressing and solving grand NDE challenges with yet-to-be determined solutions.