History Of Mechanical Engineering
Chapter 5

R.G. Cunningham
1962 - 1971

M. S. Gjesdahl was succeeded by Richard G. Cunningham. R. G. Cunningham previously had been a senior research engineer with Shell Oil Company, and prior to that he had been a member of the Engineering Experiment Station from 1951 to 1954. Cunningham received his baccalaureate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University. He assumed his responsibilities at a time when the department was undergoing a significant change. From the end of World War II until the early 1960s, the department's primary mission had been to provide a quality undergraduate education. As a result, graduate and research programs suffered from a lack of resources. Recognizing that research opportunities were critical in attracting and maintaining a quality faculty and that a quality faculty in turn would attract higher-quality graduate students, Cunningham embarked on a program of expanding graduate and research programs and modernizing the facilities.

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, and on April 12, 1961, became the first nation to put a man into space. These accomplishments, which demonstrated the advanced technological capacity of the USSR, shocked U.S. engineering educators and politicians and became the largest single factor in transforming U.S. engineering education since World War II. These changes and the new national attention to science and engineering made money available to the department that had been lacking for years. When Cunningham became head, he assumed leadership of a department in which only two members had doctoral degrees, and all members struggled with burdensome teaching loads that restricted scholarly activity. Luckily, his desire to correct these deficiencies coincided with the nation's desire to revise education in science and engineering. Cunningham's first task was to increase the number of faculty members and simultaneously increase the number of members with doctoral degrees.

The number of faculty with doctoral degrees rose from three in 1962 to twenty in 1968. At the same time, Cunningham encouraged the faculty to obtain research grants and to publish in scholarly journals. The chart shows that such scholarly activity more than doubled from 1962 to 1968, and the dollar value of such research increased by a factor of ten. While the supplementary revenue such research provided was welcome, primary emphasis was placed on demonstrable scholarly accomplishments.

Government money was made available to renovate curricula, purchase equipment, and upgrade faculty skills. The National Science Foundation (NSF), provided faculty fellowships for full-time faculty to take leaves of absence to obtain advanced degrees. A. D. Brickman, B. L. Jenks, S. S. Lestz, W. H. Park, and J. R. Zimmerman all received NSF fellowships. The NSF program was both popular and effective in increasing the level of competency of engineering faculty at Penn State and universities throughout the country.

From 1962 to 1963, Cunningham undertook an intensive recruiting campaign and added five new faculty members, all with Ph.D. degrees. Eleven sponsored research projects of a total value exceeding $200,000 were begun. Major new areas of research were high-speed rail transportation, fluid power and control systems, fluid jet amplifiers, air pollution control, combustion reaction kinetics, droplet ignition in zero-gravity field, thermal boundary layer removal by suction, and transient response of heat exchangers. Two new graduate courses in thermodynamic systems and numerical analysis were offered to the twelve Ph.D. and twenty-six master's degree candidates in the department. During the academic year 1962-63, twelve master's and two Ph.D. degrees were awarded. Ninety-one baccalaureate degrees were awarded, and 40 percent of the recipients anticipated graduate study.

The Dynamic Simulation Laboratory, funded by the NSF and the University, was created in 1963. This facility gave the department the capability to use experience gained in the laboratory to teach the design of mechanical systems. Classroom analysis and laboratory experiments were linked by simulating the appropriate physical phenomena on the lab's analog computers. The facility was available to both graduate and undergraduate students. The Systems and Control Laboratory and Electronics Shop were also established. The Automotive Traffic Safety Project, under the direction of W. E. Meyer, conducted research in road roughness and skid resistance that involved both testing and modeling. The master of engineering degree was approved by the faculty in 1966 in recognition of the need for a professional, design-oriented master's degree to supplement the existing research-oriented master of science and Ph.D. degrees.

The science and mathematics content in the baccalaureate program increased significantly in the early 1960s. While beneficial in many respects, inadequacies in the new curricula quickly became apparent. Employers of engineering graduates made it clear that they were dissatisfied. Early in the decade, the faculty at Penn State and at other major engineering schools discovered that graduates were unfortunately neither good scientists nor good engineers. Something important had been lost in transforming the curricula, and as a result, several universities, including Penn State, revised their curricula to restore engineering "design" as the core of engineering. In this context, engineering design was defined as the integration of the thermal and mechanical sciences for the purpose of creating a device, system, or process to perform desired functions. J. Lowen Shearer, who left the M.I.T. faculty in 1963 to become the Rockwell Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State, suggested calling the new courses "Centrum" to emphasize their centrality in the baccalaureate program. In 1986, the curriculum still reflects the Centrum concept. Penn State's leadership affected the engineering accrediting body ECPD (now called ABET) which, in the late 1960s, established a new requirement in engineering design to be part of accredited baccalaureate degrees. In 1967, J. L. Shearer was coauthor with A. T. Murphy and H. H. Richardson of the textbook, Introduction to Dynamic Systems, which had a profound effect on the way this subject is taught. In 1966, Shearer received the Eckman Award from the Instrument Society of America and the Richards Memorial Award from ASME. In 1973, he received the Achievement Award from the National Fluid Power Association for his contributions in the field of fluidics and in 1983, the Rufus Oldenburger medal from the Dynamics and Control Division of the ASME.

During the years 1967-68, the open wells in the central section of the second floor of the Mechanical Engineering Building were covered, and the space partitioned into rooms. Formerly, the mezzanine (as it was called) had been open in the center. The old instructional equipment located on the mezzanine was no longer used, and the department needed a series of enclosed rooms for graduate research, study areas for graduate student desks, and a few larger rooms for undergraduate laboratories. When the work was done, the second floor contained several new rooms: a department computer center (financed by the sale of the dynamometer from the transmission laboratory), an undergraduate heat transfer laboratory, a combustion research laboratory for G. M. Faeth, a research laboratory in systems and controls for J. L. Shearer, and undergraduate instruction laboratories for fluid mechanics and mechanical measurements and instrumentation. Also added was a student-faculty lounge, placed under the care of the mechanical engineering honorary society, Pi Tau Sigma. The lounge proved to be very popular with the students as a meeting room between classes, a place to discuss course assignments, and a snack area where the society sold hot dogs, soft drinks, coffee, and doughnuts. On the first floor, one quarter of the space on the east end of the building was walled off for the Dynamics Simulation Laboratory. The space opposite the elevator was also walled off and became a shop to repair and maintain instruments.

In 1965, the department awarded 156 baccalaureate, 23 master's, and 3 Ph. D. degrees — the largest number of advanced degrees ever awarded by the department and the largest number of baccalaureate degrees awarded since World War II.

Faculty proposals produced thirty-eight research grants and contracts during the academic year 1967-68. Graduate enrollment during the period was fifty-eight, compared to thirty-six graduate students five years earlier. In 1968, W. E. Meyer and H. W. (Pete) Kummer received the Metropolitan Life Award in Traffic Safety Research awarded by the National Safety Council. In 1968, Kummer died of cancer at the age of thirty-nine. W. E. Meyer established the Kummer Memorial Lecture series in his honor.

During the years 1968-69, the Acoustics and Noise Control Laboratory and the Thermal Engineering Laboratory were completed. The Acoustics and Noise Control Laboratory had large anechoic and reverberatory chambers for advanced research. The laboratory was created by Gerhard Reethof, who left the General Electric Gas Turbine Division in 1965 to become the Alcoa Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Dean Merritt Williamson resigned in 1968 to accept an endowed chair in industrial engineering at Vanderbilt, and Nunzio Palladino, educated as a mechanical engineer at Lehigh and head of the nuclear engineering department at Penn State, became dean of engineering. In 1970, the mechanical engineering department received "top rating" in the Roose-Anderson report on graduate programs, published in 1971 by the American Council on Education.

Several University interdisciplinary research programs were grouped as a distinct administrative unit called the University Intercollegiate Research Program (IRP) during the early 1960s. Three components of the IRP attracted many faculty in mechanical engineering.

The Ordnance Research Laboratory (renamed the Applied Research Laboratory [ARL] in 1971) was the largest of these in research units and conducted research in underwater propulsion and acoustics for the navy. Several faculty members had joint appointments with the ORL, teaching department courses and conducting research at ORL. Topics were carefully chosen so that the results were published in unclassified professional journals. The close collaboration with ORL was very beneficial to the department. The caliber of the research was superb, and many graduate students were supported to pursue advanced degrees. In addition, ORL provided part-time employment for outstanding undergraduate students and improved their opportunities for graduate study. Department member Robert E. Henderson is currently director of the ARL's Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel.

The first skid research program began at Penn State in 1958. Hartwig W. Kummer and Wolfgang E. Meyer inspect their newly completed test stand for the study of antilock braking systems.

The Highway Traffic Safety program attracted several faculty members engaged in research in automotive safety, vehicle dynamics, tire-road friction studies, and highway traffic noise. In 1970, the program was renamed the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute (PTI).

In 1963, the Center for Air Environment Studies (CAES) was formed by S. Calvert, professor of mechanical engineering. Faculty members affiliated with CAES in research on such topics as particle growth and dynamics of sonic agglomeration, mutagenicity of diesel exhaust particulates, improved particle sampling systems, control of workplace contaminants, and control of fugitive dust from roadways.

R. G. Cunningham was a man of extraordinary administrative ability. An example of his skill was the disposition of a large but little-used dynamometer that occupied space needed for other equipment. No one suggested removing the machine, yet no one put it to use. Wanting to end the impass in an expeditious but fair manner, Cunningham convened a meeting of the entire faculty in the lab. As everyone stood around the equipment, Cunningham asked all faculty members in turn if they had an immediate use for the equipment; each responded no. In ten minutes, the issue was resolved with no complaints.

In a matter of ten years, Cunningham redirected the department's effort and brought it to national prominence without the dissatisfaction that so often occurs in periods of rapid change. He was fair and forthright with faculty members, he never equivocated and faculty left his office knowing exactly where they stood. What faculty members chose to pursue was their prerogative; Cunningham only expected that they succeed. He was witty, mixed well with people, and was an excellent public speaker. Elected chairman of the University Faculty Senate in 1965, he was highly effective in that office and played a control role in the Senate's action to establish general baccalaureate course requirements for all degrees at Penn State. In October 1971, R. G. Cunningham was promoted to University vice president for research and graduate studies.