I am passionate about teaching and sharing my love of the many subjects that interest me.

Having myself been a first generation college graduate, I have a special respect for students attempting to be first in their families to complete a degree, and I can think of no better place for them to be than UWB!

I grew up in southeastern Virginia and am proud of my roots in the American South. Among my childhood heroes was Neil Armstrong, astronaut and first human to set foot on the moon.  (I love to share his inspiring message about being a “nerdy engineer” with my students.). I still have vivid memories of my family gathered around a black-and-white television watching that first moonwalk. The sky, literally, was the limit back in those wonder years of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but they were not to last.

My father died suddenly during mysenior year of high school, and the family’s financial security died with him.  My mother’s perserverance, devotion to family, and faith in God sustained us.  Hard work, fueled by a fierce resolve to be the best I could be, earned me admission to the University of Virginia.  Scholarships and summer jobs enabled me to stay and become the first in my family to graduate from college.

Although chemistry had long been my favorite subject, I enjoyed building and tinkering more than doing experiments at a lab bench. On the advice of my high school chemistry teacher, I decided to major in chemical engineering. It was the right choice for me; for I love applying chemistry and thermodynamics to the design, operation,and control of engines, power plants, and manufacturing processes. It didn’t come easy: problem sets, seemingly endless take-home exams, and all-nighters dominate my memories of college life.  I grew my hair long in protest against the preppy, conformist culture of college life. But the effort paid off in the end, opening up career pathways that promised both excitement and economic security.

With a freshly minted BSChE in hand, I started my professional career as a process engineer at Philip Morris USA (now Altria), where I’d interned the previous year.  My first assignments involved testing of machine prototypes and process optimization.  From there, I moved into process control and control systems design, which became my primary areas of expertise at Philip Morris and, later, Eastman Kodak.

Although I enjoyed engineering, something was missing. One thing I most appreciated during my time at UVa was the opportunity to be steeped in the vision of its founder, Thomas Jefferson. I learned that a primary end of education is the capacity to be an enlightened citizen. While in engineering technical knowledge is certainly important, the Jeffersonian ideal is most fully realized in the embedding of the values of liberty, democracy, and respect for human dignity in engineering practice. Implicit in this view is that engineering is inherently political, ethical, and cultural: it serves purposes that can be consistent with liberty and democracy, equality and justice, or inimical to them.

To explore the connections between practice and ideas, technology and society, I decided to return to school, earning an MA and PhD in Government and Foreign Affairs, focusing on science and technology in Japan. I came to UW Bothell in 1993, three years after its founding, to be part of its innovative Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program. With the establishment of the School of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in 2014, I accepted appointment to its Engineering and Mathematics Division.

After teaching chemistry and electrical engineering courses for several years, the Dean gave me the opportunity of a lifetime: design a new undergraduate major in Mechanical Engineering that fit the culture of our campus, guide it through the university’s review process, outfit a teaching lab, and hire its founding faculty.  We admitted our first class in fall 2014 and obtained accreditation as soon as we were eligible.  It’s been hard work, but the payoff is seeing our wonderful students grow with us, graduate, and embark on their careers with newly minted, ABET-accredited Mechanical Engineering degree in hand.

I am a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Washington, with endorsements in both Chemical and Mechanical Engineering.  I belong to the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and served as the 2018-19 president of the Washington Society of Professional Engineers (WSPE).  I am also a member of the Order of the Engineer and ASHRAE, and serve as the faculty advisor of our campus’s ASHRAE Student Chapter.

I am greatly blessed to have a wonderful wife (who is also an engineer), three lovely daughters, and two adorable grandchildren.

      

Engineering builds on science and math, for sure, but it is so much more.  To me, great engineering is one part science, one part math, one part intuition, and one part heart.  Math gives us the language and analytical tools, science the empirically grounded theory of how nature works.  Intuition enables us to act when information is incomplete, to think on our feet; it builds through experience in activities such as  internships, projects, collaborative research with faculty, and tinkering at the workbench and maker space.  “Heart” refers to the capacity to think and act ethically, to be sensitive to social and environmental contexts, and to practice engineering in a manner consistent with professional codes and standards.  Our goal at UW Bothell is to  graduate engineers who are not only technically competent but also mindful of their responsibilities as professionals and as citizens.