Winter 2004

Engineering TEXAS

A great college of engineering puts great faculty together with great students and provides them the tools to succeed. Our success in recruiting and keeping great faculty in the face of low state support and low tuition results from the generosity of our alumni and friends who have helped us build endowed faculty positions. Similarly, our effort to recruit the best students has been made possible by scholarships and programs paid for by alumni gifts. I’d like to comment here on these programs designed to bring the most talented students to UT Austin.

 Engineering is possibly more egalitarian than any other profession. By that I mean engineers are judged by their knowledge, skills, and creativity rather than where they come from or who their parents are. As a result, engineers come from all parts of our society and many of our students are the first in their family to attend college. In contrast to the sciences, engineering also provides an opportunity for a good job to average students as well as the most brilliant. In fact, many of our most successful alumni struggled through their engineering education and succeeded by determination and hard work rather than academic brilliance. 

 So why do we have programs to recruit more than our share of high-achieving students as measured by SAT scores and class rank?

 I believe these students lift the overall educational experience for the entire class. They ask good questions and they press the faculty for more explanation. Also, I don’t know about you, but I always made it a point to study with the smartest guy in the class if possible (now that would be the smartest guy or gal!). With an aggressive recruiting program, we have increased the number of incoming freshmen scoring 1400 or above on the SAT from 91 to 269 in the past seven years. That’s a lot of great study (and lab) partners for all our students.

 Another reason I want Texas’ brightest students to study engineering at UT Austin:  I want them to stay in Texas.

 About 67 percent of our graduates stay in the state after graduation, and the economy of Texas benefits greatly from their energy and creativity. So part of my job in student recruiting includes convincing high school seniors with offers from Cal Tech and MIT that UT Austin presents the best choice for them. We’re having good success with that.

 Our very diverse student body provides a rich experience for our students, exposing them to a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. About 90 percent of our undergraduates come from Texas, with only a few percent from abroad. But many of our students are second or third generation Americans with families from all over the world. More than 22 percent are women. I am glad our students are exposed early to the diversity they will find in the global economy. 

 I’m very proud of our students and their spectacular success in college and in the workplace. And I’m grateful to our alumni who give us the resources to recruit and educate these terrific young people.

Ben Streetman

Dean, College of Engineering

Bright Students are Hot Commodities

 The brightest students elevate learning for all. While educators have recognized this for centuries, these two facts quickly become evident to talented high school seniors when scholarship offers begin to arrive in the mail. They learn that widely-publicized athletic scholarships have their financial equals in quietly-conveyed academic awards.

 UT Austin’s College of Engineering has long participated in highly-competitive recruitment of the best high school graduates. Thanks to alumni and friends who generously fund the studies of future engineers, the College awards more than $2 million in scholarships each year. This supports approximately 15 percent of all UT engineering students.

 In addition, the College recently began pairing scholarship offers with personal visits to these students and their parents, a practice long embraced by private colleges. The recruiting events, called Explore Engineering, introduce alumni, College faculty, staff and current students to prospective engineering students and their parents. In the professional headquarters of major engineering firms in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, potential recruits interact with successful engineers and College officials in a relaxed setting.

 The following pages offer a sampling of both the resulting students, and the people who made their UT experiences possible.

Austere College Experience Drives Gift for Change

 As a youth, J. David Frank liked tooling around with old cars. His hobby eventually led to his career.

 “I’d always been good in math and science,” he says, ”and with anything mechanical. I knew I wanted to major in mechanical engineering.”

 As a student, he had little to no financial support to cover costs like tuition and housing, so he worked to cover his expenses and had little time for anything but school and his job.

 Frank persevered, and graduated in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and accepted a position with Collins Radio. In 1974 he joined

 Electrospace Systems, which eventually became Raytheon E-Systems. When Frank retired in 1999, he was their director of aeronautical engineering.

 Frank’s career challenged him from the beginning, but he enjoyed it.

 “I was fortunate that early on my assignments allowed a lot of creativity. The problems were complex and difficult,” he says.

 “I had the opportunity to begin with a small company (Electrospace Systems) that grew from a handful of engineers to 600 over 25 years,” he says. “During that time, I was allowed to hire staff and define the organization. Our continued growth was rewarding.”

 After working for 33 years in the aerospace industry, he decided he had the means to give students the opportunity he didn’t have—to graduate from college with an engineering degree without having to overload themselves with work just to pay the bills. Frank and his wife made a donation to the college, which was matched by Raytheon E-Systems, to fund the J. David and Jean Frank Endowed Scholarship. It supports undergraduate mechanical engineering students.

 Besides funding the scholarship, Frank has found other ways to keep in touch with the university and the college. He served on the aerospace engineering visiting committee in the last few years of his affiliation with Raytheon, and after he retired, he and his wife moved from Waco back to Austin. He also has two other reasons to keep in touch with the college—his children, William and Kelly. His son, William, earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1998 and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2001.  His daughter, Kelly, earned a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering in 2001.  

 He and his wife have “been trying to add every year” to their giving. They recently contributed to the reconstruction of the Taylor T -Room in the Engineering Teaching Center. The original T-Room was in Taylor Hall and served as a lounge and study area for engineering students.

 Now that he’s retired, Frank has returned to his original hobby—fixing up cars. He says he works on three “old Corvettes” and enjoys life much more leisurely. He hopes the students he helps can benefit from more leisure as well.

At Age 29, A Budding Philanthropist Emerges

 It’s not unusual for former students to decide to fund an endowed scholarship. What’s unusual is that Vicki Lai, who did just that, isn’t even 30 years old.

 As a chemical engineering student at The University of Texas at Austin in the early 1990s, Lai had a Friends of Alec scholarship that covered her tuition.

 “I felt the benefits at the time and later on as well,” she says.

 It allowed her to only worry about paying for housing and books, and she says it relieved her parents of the burden of having to support her college education. It also allowed her to graduate without a school loan and freed her schedule more to pursue extracurricular activities. She was active in Omega Chi Epsilon, the chemical engineering honor society, Project SEEE, where she taught science and math once a week to grade school students, and the UT Designated Driver Program, which provides cab rides to students to discourage drinking and driving.

 She knew she wanted to major in chemical engineering from the time she started college, and she wanted her degree from UT Austin.

 “They have a strong chemical engineering program, and it’s what I wanted to do,” she says.

 After graduating with her bachelor’s degree in 1996, Lai began working for ExxonMobil as a drilling engineer, a career that has allowed her to travel while performing a job she enjoys. “It’s fun,” she says.

 Less than a decade after graduating and entering the workforce, Lai decided she wanted to help students receive a quality education without a financial burden.

 Lai called the College of Engineering and donated money through the Friends of Alec giving program. When ExxonMobil matched her donation in 2002, the V.S. Lai Friends of Alec Excellence Fund was born.

 Lai wants to see young engineering students graduate from a top engineering college and have the same opportunities she’s had.

 “I wanted to help people out,” she says. “I was at a point in my life where I could contribute.”

A Professor Educates with a Classroom and His Money

 In the early 1980s, Dr. Wallace Fowler taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy with a man named John E. Hatlelid. Fowler had no way of knowing that 20 years later Hatlelid’s son would be the first recipient of the Marsha and Wallace Fowler Endowed Scholarship, partially funded by Fowler and his wife and matched by his aerospace engineering students at UT Austin. Perhaps the coincidence becomes less surprising considering Fowler’s long-term effect on aerospace education.

 Except for that brief stint at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Fowler has taught in UT Austin’s aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics department since 1965. Immediately after finishing his Ph.D., he began teaching. Between 1965 and 1970, he says, the aerospace engineering department (which merged with the graduate engineering mechanics program in 1968) grew by 28 faculty members. 

“We were tooling up for Apollo,” he says, referring to Apollo 11, the 1969 NASA mission that allowed Neil Armstrong to first set foot on the moon. “They were trying to build the space program. They were grabbing anyone they could get their hands on to teach.”

 As it turned out, Fowler, who teaches space mission design, orbital and flight mechanics, proved he wasn’t just anyone. During his time at UT Austin, he was selected as a member of UT’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers, recognizing his outstanding teaching at the undergraduate level, and served as president of the American Society of Engineering Education. In 1999, he decided he wanted to give more to his students than his gifted teaching abilities.

 “You cut me and I bleed orange,” he says with a laugh. “I have three degrees from here. UT has been my life. My wife and I wanted to give something back to UT for what it had provided for us. She is not a UT graduate, but UT has been part of our lives ever since we married.”

 “I feel that a better-educated population is the quickestand best way to make the world better,” he says. “One way to achieve that is to teach—and I do that. Another way is to help educate one person at a time—and scholarships help do that.”

 Fowler and his wife, Marsha, provided a donation in 1999 to initiate fundraising for the endowment. His former students and friends helped complete the endowed scholarship by 2001.

 “Students always have needs,” he says, “some more than others. I think that investing in education is perhaps the best way to leave the world a better place than I found it.”

Scholarship Recipients

 Farah Ghazi

Major:  Mechanical Engineering   Year:  Senior   Expected graduation:  May 2004   Hometown:  Irving, TX

 Scholarship received:  J. David and Jean Frank Endowed Scholarship

 Extracurricular activities:  Director of Activities for Pi Tau Sigma honor society, American Society of

 Mechanical Engineers member, Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired volunteer

 In five years:  Enrolled in an M.B.A. program

 The greatest benefit of having an engineering degree:  Knowing how to solve complex problems in creative ways. It also gives you the ability to search for challenging jobs in a wide variety of fields.

An engineering degree gives you the technical background to work in almost any industry.

 The most valuable lesson learned while in the College:  You have to know what you want and what you need to do to achieve certain goals.

Elizabeth Roach

Major:  Chemical Engineering   Year:  Senior   Expected Graduation:  December 2004   Hometown:  Houston, TX

 Scholarship received:  V.S. Lai Friends of Alec Excellence Fund

 How it helped:  It was a huge factor in deciding to come to UT—when they offered it to me, I felt sought out and wanted. Plus it helps me keep my grades high.

 Extracurricular activities:  Alpha Phi Sigma pre-med honor society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Gamma Beta Phi service organization

 Plans after graduation:  Attend medical school, preferably at the University of Texas-Southwestern in Dallas or the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston

 Most valuable lesson learned while in the College:  Network!

John Hatlelid

 Major:  Aerospace Engineering   Year:  Senior   Expected Graduation:  May 2004   Hometown:  Phoenix, AZ

 Scholarship received:  Marsha and Wallace Fowler Endowed Scholarship

 How it helped:  It has greatly eased the financial burden placed on my parents and myself.

 Extracurricular activities:  Sigma Gamma Tau aerospace engineering honor society

 Plans after graduation:  Attend graduate school to pursue a master’s and Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering

 In five years I will be:  Researching and developing unmanned aerial vehicles

 Most valuable lesson learned while in the College:  If I buckle down and apply myself, I can solve any problem.