Shen reflects on 9 years as mechanical engineering chair
August 19, 2025 - By Carly Bowling
Yu-Lin Shen, longtime chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has stepped down from the position after 9 years. Shen returned to the faculty as a professor in July and reflected on his time as chair and his insights on leadership in anticipation of the Fall 2025 semester.
A lot can happen in nearly a decade spent in leadership, and Shen has a lot to be proud of. While chair, the department grew from 14 to 19 full-time professors and lecturers, an all-time high in the department’s 94-year history, he said. When Shen became chair, there was only one woman on the department’s faculty. Now there are four.
Developing and growing faculty is just one aspect of leading a department. Department chairs must also consider education, research and student interests.
“We have a very large undergraduate student body with high-profile design programs and maintaining these takes a lot of effort from students, faculty and staff. At the same time, we need to perform cutting-edge research to maintain viable graduate programs and stay competitive on the national scale. I think we’ve been able to make strides in both research and education,” he said.
On the education side, the department, in collaboration with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, launched a successful online master’s program in space systems engineering, now in its seventh year. The Department of Mechanical Engineering also began offering a new undergraduate concentration in microsystems engineering that has become popular with students. More recently, the department created a graduate concentration in renewable energy. By Shen’s count, about 740 undergraduate students and about 350 graduate students graduated during his chairship.
There are a few things he’ll miss about leading the department. Perhaps most of all, the people he worked closely with and his ability to help his colleagues and students succeed.
“Being a chair, I enjoyed the overwhelming support of our faculty, staff and students. We have great people here. I cherished and enjoyed working with those different groups and personnel in our department. They supported me a lot and I’m grateful for that,” Shen said.
Shen, who served under the tenure of three School of Engineering deans, offered advice to new or incoming department chairs.
“A department chair needs to stay engaged. My advice to any department chair is to attend events and functions personally to the extent possible, because people like to see that personal involvement. When others feel supported by you, they will in turn support you.”
Now entering his first academic year as only a professor for the first time in nearly a decade, Shen looks forward to more time dedicated to teaching and research. As a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers since 2005, he specializes in research on materials and solid mechanics, specifically mechanical deformation of heterogeneous materials and structures.
