Rate My Professor Charles Fleddermann

Charles B. Fleddermann is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico, where he has served on the faculty for over thirty-five years. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1977, an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1980, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1985. Fleddermann joined the University of New Mexico in 1985 as an assistant professor with a joint appointment at Sandia National Laboratories, was promoted to associate professor in 1991 and professor in 1998, and has held the position of associate dean for academic affairs since 2002. Additional appointments include acting dean of graduate studies from 2007 to 2009 and interim dean of the School of Engineering from January to March 2023. He previously worked as an electrical design engineer at Texas Instruments, Inc. in 1977 and took a sabbatical leave at Sandia National Laboratories during the 1996-97 academic year.

His academic interests and research specializations include optical diagnostics of plasmas, plasma processing of materials, solar photovoltaics, and engineering ethics. Fleddermann developed and taught a course on professional ethics for engineers, participated in research projects addressing ethical issues in nanotechnology, and delivered professional development seminars on engineering ethics in New Mexico and beyond. He authored the textbook Engineering Ethics, fourth edition (Prentice Hall, 2011), which has been adopted by numerous universities including Iowa State University, University of Florida, University of Texas, Lehigh University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and translated into Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and Indonesian; he also co-authored Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering (Prentice Hall, 2003), translated into Turkish. Selected key publications include "Engineering Ethics Cases for Electrical and Computer Engineering Students" (IEEE Transactions on Education, 2000), "Ferroelectric Sources and Their Application to Pulsed Power: A Review" (IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 1997), and "Characterization of Pulse-Modulated Inductively Coupled Plasmas in Argon and Chlorine" (Journal of Applied Physics, 1997). He was named Gardner-Zemke Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2002 for outstanding teaching, received the ECE Distinguished Teacher Award in 2001, and was inducted into Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies. Fleddermann served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Education.