University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering

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Back To: Rao's Faculty Bio

N. Narayana Rao

Back To: Faculty Bio

N. Narayana Rao’s book initiates Illinois ECE Series and continues “ Illinois Way”

By Jamie Hutchinson

The sixth edition of “Elements of Engineering Electromagnetics” by ECE Associate Department Head and Edward C. Jordan Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering N. Narayana Rao is the first book in the Illinois ECE Series from Prentice Hall. This Illinois ECE Series continues a tradition in undergraduate education that has been practiced for more than a century by faculty in ECE. That tradition, which has come to be called "the Illinois Way," balances adherence to the tried-and-true with readiness to change decisively in order to shape a better future.

The Illinois Way encompasses more than textbooks. Early curricula in the department (then called Electrical Engineering) included courses in military drills, drafting, and surveying; later, Illinois would be the first program in the nation offering a freshman introduction to concepts in circuits, electromagnetics, electronics, control, and digital systems. Computer-based education in the department dates back to 1960 with PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations), a time-shared network that gave rise to one of the world's first online communities.

The department's great pride is its world-class undergraduate laboratories. A century ago, facilities consisted of batteries, electrical machinery, and illumination equipment; now the department houses unsurpassed educational laboratories for integrated circuit fabrication, digital signal processing, control systems, computer architecture, and more.

Popular and innovative textbooks have long been a part of the Illinois Way. Former department head and longtime engineering dean at Illinois, William L. Everitt, edited over 100 titles for a series of engineering textbooks published by Prentice-Hall in the middle of the last century. Everitt also wrote textbooks. His “Communication Engineering,” first published in 1932 and revised into the 1950s with Illinois colleague G. E. Anner, deserves credit for helping push the electrical engineering profession from its pre-World War II emphasis on power systems to its postwar emphasis on information technology and electronics. Edward C. Jordan, head of the department from 1954 to 1979, wrote “Electromagnetic Waves and Radiating Systems,” long a standard textbook in the field, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1950 and revised in 1968. And M. E. Van Valkenburg, another long-standing faculty member who also served as head and dean, wrote several influential textbooks, including “Network Analysis,” one of the most internationally popular engineering texts of all time, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1955, and revised in 1964 and 1974.

It is appropriate that the Illinois ECE Series begin with this sixth edition of Rao's book. Rao was hired onto the Illinois faculty in 1965 by Jordan. Prentice-Hall published the first edition of “Elements” in 1977, and by the time of its fifth edition, dedicated in 2000 to none other than Ed Jordan, the text had established an international reputation for its grounding in time-honored practices even as it evolved progressively from one edition to the next. That is the essence of the Illinois Way.


Originally from: Ingenuity November 2004

 

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering

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