GE-UMass Apprentices Stage Reunion
More than 50 years after pioneering one of the first successful industry/university educational collaborations, participants in the General Electric/UMass Amherst Apprentice Program reunited on campus over the recent Homecoming Weekend. The event was sponsored by the College of Engineering and coordinated by Donald Robinson, the director of Environmental Health and Safety at UMass Amherst and an adjunct professor in the Public Health Department. Dr. Robinson participated in the apprentice program from 1960 to 1964. Some at the reunion had not seen each other in more than 40 years, although a similar reunion happened on campus in 2003. Read more »
College Stages 2nd Annual Alumni Awards
On Saturday, November 5, the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst held its second annual Outstanding Alumni Awards Luncheon during Homecoming Weekend. The luncheon included the presentation of College of Engineering Outstanding Junior/Senior Alumni Awards to 10 individuals who, through exemplary accomplishments, epitomize the potential of an education at the UMass Amherst College of Engineering. Recipients of the College of Engineering 2011 Outstanding Senior Alumni Award have brought recognition and honor to the College of Engineering through their professional achievements, leadership, and service to the profession, university, and society. Read more »
Distinguished Alumnus Arlindo Jorge Passes Away
Arlindo Jorge, a member of the UMass Amherst class of 1950 and one of the first students to receive an electrical engineering degree here, died on September 14 at the age of 87. UMass presented Jorge with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007 and, among his many philanthropic interests, he endowed the Arlindo Jorge Scholarship Fund for students in our Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Jorge began his career with the Electron Tube Division of Sperry Gyroscope Company, developing high-powered final amplifiers (klystrons) for military radars. At Sperry, Jorge also co-invented the dual-oscillator radar system. Jorge later founded Syncor Industries Corporation, a company that manufactured electronic equipment for the military. Read more »
MIE Alum Wins Clean Energy Award
Mechanical engineering alumnus Walter D. Musial (’80 B.S., ’83 M.S.) is the 2011 recipient of the UMass Amherst Alumni Association’s first Alumni Clean Energy Award (ACE). This award recognizes notable achievement or innovation in the public, business, or professional areas of clean energy or technologies. Musial is a principal engineer and manager of Offshore Wind and Ocean Power Systems at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. “UMass really changed my outlook on engineering,” he said. “In 1979, it was the only place in the country that had a full big picture view of renewable energy development, before the term was even being used. I took classes in solar, wind, and all kinds of energy conversion and that just hooked me in. I still think UMass is one of the only places where you can take a dedicated course in wind energy engineering.” Read more »
Jack Wolf Passes Away
Jack Keil Wolf, a revered engineer and computer theorist who taught at the College of Engineering from1973 to 1984, died on May 12 at his home in the La Jolla section of San Diego, according to an obituary on May 20 in the New York Times. He was 76. The Times article said that Wolf’s “mathematical reasoning about how best to transmit and store information helped shape the digital innards of computers and other devices that power modern society.” The cause of his death was amyloidosis, a disorder caused by the buildup of a complex protein in body tissue or organs, his daughter Sarah Wolf said. The rest of the Times obituary is below. Read more »
Trading Apples and Blackberries for Avocados
Seven years ago, Ciriaco "Cid" da Silva, a 1982 mechanical engineering alumnus, and his wife, Corinne da Silva, left the virtual world of the computer industry for the very real and earthy world of avocado farming. The outgrowth of this major career move is Bella Vado (Avocado Oil), the first U.S. manufacturer of avocado oil. Now Bella Vado is a very real Southern California treasure. In 2003, Cid resigned from his job as a software architect, while Corinne gave up her job as managing director of an Internet marketing firm, so they could purchase a 40-acre avocado grove near Valley Center in Southern California. Read more »
College Donor Receives Distinguished Achievement Award
Jerome “Jerry” M. Paros, the Founder and CEO of Paroscientific, Inc. and one of the largest contributors to the College of Engineering, received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the university at its commencement ceremonies on May 13. Paros is an internationally recognized innovator and leader in the field of measurement sciences, the owner of more than 20 U.S. patents, a successful businessman, and a visionary philanthropist. Paros has established endowments at a number of national universities, including the Jerome M. Paros Fund for Measurement and Environmental Sciences Research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, created with a gift of $2 million. That fund currently supports the NSF Engineering Research Center on Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. Read more »
Patenting the Technology Revolution
In 1987, after Randy Pritzker had earned his B.S. degree from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, he took a radical sidestep in his career by deciding to go to the Boston College Law School. That juke in his education proved to be a game breaker and led to his remarkable 21-year career as one of Massachusetts’ “Super Lawyers” at the Wolf Greenfield law firm, one of the world’s leading legal specialists in intellectual property, or IP. Read more »
Obituary for Emeritus Professor Marcel Vanpée
Marcel Vanpée, 94, died February 3rd, 2011, surrounded by his wife and daughters. Marcel Vanpée was Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His scientific research and teaching led him from his native Belgium to Lovanium University in the former Belgian Congo and then to the United States, first in 1948 as a research fellow at the University of Minnesota and then in 1957 to pursue research in combustion science at the Bureau of Mines in Pittsburgh. He was an avid outdoors sportsman and adventurer and exhibited his love of the world through his many international friends and travels. Read more »
Bloomberg Crowns Alum "Junk-bond King"
In an article posted on its website November 18, financial news powerhouse Bloomberg focused on the accomplishments of College of Engineering alumnus Mark Notkin in a long article with the headline “Fidelity's Junk-Bond King Notkin Adds Stocks as Debt Rally Dies.” The high-yield mutual fund managed by Notkin, the $12.8 billion Fidelity Capital & Income Fund, beat all rivals over the past five years, but now he says the rally in junk bonds is over and stocks are a better buy. Read the entire article here: junk-bond-king-notkin Read more »
Historic Alumni Honored
The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst held its first annual Outstanding Alumni Awards Luncheon during Homecoming Weekend, on Saturday, October 16, 2010. The luncheon included the presentation of College of Engineering Outstanding Junior/Senior Alumni Awards to individuals who, through exemplary accomplishments, epitomize the potential of an education at the UMass Amherst College of Engineering. The event happened from 12:00 p.m. until 2:00 p.m. in the 10th floor Amherst Room of the UMass Amherst Campus Center. Read more »
Person Most Likely to Succeed
After Arnold Most graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1964 with one of our early Industrial Engineering degrees, he arrived at powerhouse IBM with many other engineers from the most prestigious universities in the country. At that time, UMass was still trying to establish its reputation and break away from the old Mass Aggie image. Most’s rise through the ranks of the IBM hierarchy during the early days of the semiconductor boom was proof positive that our engineering education had already arrived. Read more »
Old History of COE Newly Recovered
This summer the College of Engineering came across an old history of the institution, as written in 1973 by Professor John H. Dittfach about the early years. It reads, in part: A Department of Agricultural Engineering was established in 1914, and for many years a Department of Mathematics and Civil Engineering existed. In 1936 this work was combined into a Department of General Engineering, lasting only long enough to separate in 1946 into two separate departments, again Agricultural and Civil. The pressure for a full-scale School of Engineering came from the returning veterans of World War II, who returned to civilian status with a G.I bill for education in their hands and found inadequate facilities in the Commonwealth for engineering education. Read more »
Making History Winston-Churchill-Style
One surprising trait in Bill Woodburn, who earned his B.S. from our Chemical Engineering Department in 1956, is his admiration of history, and especially Winston Churchill. That’s why he likes to tell this anecdote. Once, when asked how history would view him, Churchill responded, “Quite well, since I plan to write most of it myself.” No wonder, then, that Woodburn was so enthusiastic about recalling his memories at the College of Engineering from 1952 to 1956. That way, just like Churchill, he gets to write part of the history himself. Read more »
A Pioneer Among Electrical Engineering Grads
Before Bob Raymond graduated as an electrical engineering major in 1949, he witnessed many of the momentous events of that time in our world, our campus, and our college. He experienced World War II, the GI Bill, the legislative action establishing the University of Massachusetts in 1947, the campus reorganization creating the School of Engineering in 1947, and the formation of the Electrical Engineering Department in 1948. So, you see, Bob Raymond is an eye-witness who can report first-hand on these larger-than-life events. Read Article »
"Moments" Records COE History for 50th Anniversary
In 1997 the College of Engineering published a brochure called "Moments" (subhead: "Great Moments in Engineering Education") that captured much of the early history of the institution from its founding in 1947 to approximately 1975. Among the people and events mentioned in this impressionistic account are the first dean, George A. Marston, the first graduate, Mr. Antonio Ferreira, several of the early head secretaries, the creation of the Engineering Library in 1955, the beginnings of the departments, some of the early buildings, and the first concrete canoe. Read Article »
The First Eight Years
“The First Eight Years” was an historical narrative written by David C. N. Robb of the Massachusetts Zeta Fraternity in 1956 and republished in the 1997 50th anniversary brochure. Among other historical topics, it dealt in detail with the initial buildings and those built in the early years of the school. It also touched on the accreditation of the majors, the equipping of the laboratories, the expansion of the university, and the founding of campus chapters of professional societies and fraternities. Read Article »
Testing Moon Dust for NASA
This article was published by the Chicago Daily News in 1962 by its science writer about the work for NASA of Emeritus Professor Ernest T. Selig (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department), who was studying the composition of moon dust in preparation for the first lunar landing. As the article speculated, “When the first space ship lands on the moon, will it come to a jarring halt on a solid foundation – or will it sink into a sea of dust?” NASA funded Professor Selig to answer this vital question. Read Article »
Unlocking Secrets of the Moon and Mars
The following article was published in Midwest, the magazine of the Chicago Sun-Times, in 1962 about the work of Emeritus Professor Ernest T. Selig (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department). As the article begins, “‘Moon Dust,’ says the label on the little glass jar hanging on a string from the ceiling. Ernest T. Selig unscrews its cap, shakes the jar a little, sticks his finger in it. A cloud of white stuff, so delicate that it eddies in the air, floats out of the jar. His finger is coated with a film much finer than talcum powder or cake flour.” Read Article »
Microwave Remote Sensing Pioneers
The following article was published by the University of Massachusetts Alumnus newspaper in 1983 about the microwave remote sensing research of Professors Calvin T. Swift and Robert E. McIntosh of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. The article goes into fine detail about the extensive research of the two microwave remote-sensing pioneers while using radiometry techniques to monitor ice formations, severe storms, and such ocean conditions as wind speeds and current, along with surface roughness. Read Article »
College Dedicates Knowles Engineering Building
The Summer 1991 Engineering News reported on the dedication of the Knowles Engineering Building in April of that year and featured the man it was dedicate to, alumnus Andrew C. Knowles III, on the cover. In addition to all his work for the university Board of Trustees, College of Engineering capital campaigns, and the college’s Dean’s Advisory Council, Knowles was noted for starring as a relief pitcher on the UMass Amherst baseball team in the mid-1950s, when he was known around campus as “Nuthinball” Knowles, the world’s best short game pitcher. Read Article »
