Dear President Crow, We, the undersigned, as representatives of the students in the School of Materials, wish to express our extreme displeasure with the proposed dissolution of our department as an independent entity. We have been attending the School of Materials in good faith that the university would continue to support its meteoric rise in capabilities and talents. We hoped that a sustained investment in this school would produce a first class research and learning environment - one that we could depend on and leverage well after graduation. The planned merger of this exceptional school with Mechanical & Aerospace, and Chemical Engineering would reverse the momentum we have gained over the last three years. This phenomenal momentum is not common. It requires the combined efforts of an outstanding faculty and students. Talented students who, in all cases, have sustained enormous opportunity costs to invest their time in an emerging program. Faculty who have spent years laboring towards a department which now contains over 90 doctoral students and which spends close to 7 million dollars on research, more than either of our proposed partners. Research in materials is inherently interdisciplinary. Students join us from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and many faculty members maintain joint appointments in other engineering departments and throughout the physical sciences. This collaboration is not only a cause of our quick successes; it is also a product of them. Because the materials engineering discipline is recognized world-wide as a vehicle for these collaborations, dissolving the School of Materials would diminish both the quality and diversity of future faculty candidates. It is clear that this proposal would also negatively impact the attraction of excellent domestic students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Without an attractive and distinct program in Materials Science and Engineering, the future department will be unable to sustain our current remarkable trajectory. As students of the current School of Materials, we would lose the loyalty and pride we hold for our program and be uninvested in the new department. We would be unconvinced that the university is committed to exemplary materials research and education. We will not, in good conscience, be able to recommend the future structure to prospective students or employers. Thank you for your time, and we hope you will carefully consider our concerns as students and members of the School of Materials. Sincerely, The School of Materials Student Body

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