Our Staff

Thomas Angelotti

Thomas Angelotti

• Electronic Technician

My workplace is the ECE Technical Shop. Duties include managing an extensive parts stock, assisting students with parts & ideas for design & assembly of complex electronic devices, and acquiring of outside parts for those.  Also tracking of spending on many student projects, which are very important for their grades. Also: Assisting with electronic device maintenance and repairs, and tracking loans to students, faculty, and staff of many types and pieces of test equipment.

Outside of work my wife and I do yard work around our house, including planting and caring for flowers and shrubs. We travel by car on many day trips nearby and longer distances on vacations to interesting places. And we both have an avid interest in hand-crafts, antiques, & flea markets, which we look for on vacations.

Shannon Cotter

Shannon Cotter

• Administrative Assistant V

Shannon provides administrative support to the Undergraduate program in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and joined WPI in July 2011. Shannon acts as the primary reception person and assists with all aspects of departmental secretarial work. Shannon organizes the undergraduate program events, oversees student payroll, provides meeting minutes, orders textbooks for the department and helps monitor the department website.  Shannon enjoys spending time at Cape Cod with her husband Pete and son Mitchell. 

Patrick Morrison

Patrick Morrison

• Electronics Lab Manager III

I manage the undergraduate teaching labs for the Electrical & Computer Engineering department. A project based environment, students learn how to design and build analog, digital electronics for real world applications.  

Major Qualifying Projects for students are supported through our technical support facility and Innovation Laboratory. Students have access to individual lab space, computers, test equipment and thousands of components for quick turn-around projects.   

Each year we host the ECE Spark party, sparks and electro-magnetism inspire undecided students to consider electrical engineering as major study. The main attraction, twin 7 foot tall Tesla Coils built with ECE technical support facility by students, faculty and staff.

James P. O’Rourke

James P. O’Rourke

• Department Manager
• Adjunct Faculty Member

My job responsibilities include managing the ECE Department and Atwater Kent Facilities, where I also hold and adjunct faculty position. Degrees include AS, 1964, BS, WPI, 1967, MS, WPI, 1971, DSc, 2002, Certificate Telescopic Astronomy, 1972, Certificate Visual Astronomy, 1974. Teaching includes ECE 2010 D Term, ECE 2799 B Term and depending on the need, ECE 2201, ECE 3204, ECE 2029. I am an advisor for MQPs, IQPs and Astronomy Club. I am also a campus wide consultant to faculty and students in the electrical, electromechanical engineering, Telescopic and Observation Astronomy areas. I supervise activities of the ECE Technical Service Facility (shop), and am Senior Electronics Technician and Laboratory Manager.

Colleen Sweeney

Colleen Sweeney

• Graduate Administrative Assistant

Colleen responsibilities include but are not limited to the following: the admissions process and all the paperwork for ECE graduate students (i.e. forms, letters, academic advisors, EPAF’s, graduate seminars, etc.). For the past six years, she has helped organize the Precision Indoor Personnel Location and Tracking (PPL) Workshops that have been held in the campus center Odeum here at WPI. She recently received the 2012 IEEE Community Service award for the second time; the first was given to her in 2006.

She is married with three children. Her eldest son is married and will be graduating from The Washington School of Law in December 2012; her youngest daughter is currently a senior at Notre Dame Academy and will be heading off to college in the fall of 2013.

Colleen will be welcoming her first grandchild in March 2013! Colleen is an avid reader who always enjoys a good book and loves to draw with pen and ink and paint with watercolors when time permits. She is also a bargain hunter whose biggest high is finding treasures at flea markets, yard sales or at Salvation Army and Goodwill stores!