  Recently, a \textbf{SCHUR} method was proposed in \cite{Chu2} to solve the
robust pole assignment problem in state feedback control. It takes the
departure from normality of the closed-loop system matrix $A_c$ as the measure
of robustness, and intends to minimize it via the real Schur form of $A_c$. The
\textbf{SCHUR} method works well for real poles, but when complex conjugate
poles are involved, it does not produce the real Schur form of $A_c$ and can be
problematic. In this paper, we put forward a modified Schur method, which
improves the efficiency of \textbf{SCHUR} when complex conjugate poles are to
be assigned. Besides producing the real Schur form of $A_c$, our approach also
leads to a relatively small departure from normality of $A_c$. Numerical
examples show that our modified method produces better or at least comparable
results than both \textbf{place} and \textbf{robpole} algorithms, with much
less computational costs.
