D.R. Olson
1972 - 1982

In April 1972, Donald R. Olson was appointed head of the department. D. R. Olson received his undergraduate degree from Oregon State University and advanced degrees from Yale. In 1961, he resigned from the Yale faculty and became professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State and head of the propulsion section of the Ordnance Research Laboratory. He was also coordinator of the thermal sciences courses in the department.

When D. R. Olson became department head, the inadequate office accommodations of the faculty were a constant source of irritation. The original building, constructed in 1921, and the north and south wings, added in 1951, were designed for a faculty half the size of the faculty of the 1970s. Faculty members were housed two or three to an office, and secretarial help was inconveniently located. Olson divided the larger offices and was able to provide each faculty member with a private office. The arrangement produced some unusual doorways, but the privacy it afforded was appreciated by the entire faculty.

During the ten years in which Olson was department head, the undergraduate, graduate, and research programs continued to grow, even though the faculty decreased from thirty to twenty-six and many laboratory facilities became unusable through age and obsolescence. Since 1973, the undergraduate enrollment has increased continuously to the present. The number of baccalaureate graduates was 75 in academic year 1974-75, but by 1982-83 there were 265 baccalaureate graduates and more than a thousand undergraduates enrolled in the department. Research funds from external sources increased from $450,000 in 1972 to more than $1,600,000 in 1982. The number of graduate degrees per year more than doubled in the ten-year period. In 1972, the department began to receive financial support from certain industries as they recognized the value of Penn State graduates to their respective organizations. Grants to improve instruction were obtained from Alcoa, Dupont, Ford, Rockwell, and Union Carbide. In 1973, an elaborate Career Counseling Program was established that required seniors to define their career goals, including possible graduate study; also a number of faculty participated in local high school career study programs to attract qualified high school seniors to study engineering at Penn State.

The large undergraduate enrollments led to a number of program changes between 1972 and 1982. In 1978, the undergraduate curriculum was revised to allow the faculty to cope with growing teaching responsibilities and simultaneously increased research activity. Lecture sections were doubled in size, and then doubled again. The common introductory course in thermodynamics, which was created in the early 1960s for both mechanical engineering and students from other engineering disciplines, was replaced by a separate service course and a course for mechanical engineers. In 1979, a lecture section of 450 students in the thermodynamics service course was offered in Schwab auditorium by F. W. Schmidt and C. Birnie, Jr.; the 100-student tutorial sections were staffed by graduate teaching assistants. In 1980, this large-lecture format was extended to include seven of the required courses in the mechanical engineering curriculum.

In academic year 1961-62, the University adopted a new calendar based on four ten-week terms, including one term during June, July, and August. To staff the courses, faculty teaching contracts were organized on a twelve-month basis. It was hoped that students would use the summer term to accelerate their degrees or make up deficiencies, but summer enrollments never reached the numbers intended. In 1974, several colleges, including Engineering, decided to change policy and offer only nine-month teaching contracts to new faculty. In addition, existing faculty were encouraged to exchange their twelve-month contracts for nine-month contracts. The plan involved reducing faculty contracts one month per year for three years in exchange for a fixed modest salary raise for each year. Another feature of the plan was to make it possible for faculty to support themselves from funds from sponsored research and increase their yearly salaries. For faculty supporting themselves 100 percent in the summer, yearly salaries increased by 33 percent. The plan was conceived deliberately as an incentive to research. Following by just a few years the attempt to unionize the faculty, the plan fostered entrepreneurial attitudes and afforded faculty the opportunity to increase their individual salary more than would have been possible through collective bargaining. Within five years, virtually all mechanical engineering faculty members were on nine-month salary plans.

In 1975, the department received excellent evaluations for both its undergraduate and graduate programs. These evaluations were part of an exhaustive process of "Program Review" instituted by President John W. Oswald for all segments of the University, i.e., instruction, research, and administration. Detailed questions were asked of each department. Copious documents were prepared by the departments and reviewed by several examining committees composed of faculty and administrators outside the department and outside the College of Engineering. The process lasted for nearly five years and virtually every tenured faculty member served on at least one review panel for departments throughout the University. On the whole, the process was beneficial in that it forced departments to assess themselves and submit to examination by colleagues who had no vested interest in the department.

Faculty research interests also expanded during this period. The application of the digital computer to problems in mechanical engineering advanced rapidly in the 1970s. In the thermal sciences, the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) became a recognized field of research. Professors F. W. Schmidt and C. L. Merkle, collaborating with faculty in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, formed a CFD group that was soon to become a leader in the country. Laminar and turbulent flow fields in and around complex geometries were analyzed by numerical techniques. Other members of the department acquired international reputations through research in rocket combustion, fire spread along walls and ceilings, heat transfer in enclosures, heat exchangers, drag reduction in marine vessels by microbubbles, and submerged reacting turbulent jets. Advances also were made in experimental fields, including laser doppler techniques to measure laminar and turbulent velocities and laser emission spectroscopy to measure temperature and concentration fields. Under the direction of K. Kuo, Distinguished Professor, the High Pressure Combusion Laboratory (HPCL) was created for experimental studies in rocket propulsion. Within a few years, the laboratory's research program became the best in the country. The engineering and science division of the Army Research Office (ARO) acknowledged the work of K. Kuo in 1977 and 1980 with its Outstanding Achievement Award. K. Kuo is the author of Principles of Combustion, published by Wiley-Interscience in 1986.

Under D. R. Olson's direction, the department's research efforts grew dramatically. In 1975, faculty were involved in forty-one active projects and submitted thirty-four proposals for review, compared with eighteen active projects and fourteen proposals five years earlier. Research projects included automotive highway safety, droplet combustion, air pollution control, noise control, and underwater propulsion systems. Research began in a significant new field — the design of an artificial heart — in collaboration with faculty at the Hershey Medical Center. William S. Pierce, professor of surgery and chief, Division of Artificial Organs, Hershey Medical Center, wanted to design a mechanical heart for use in patients awaiting the arrival of a human heart for transplantation. The collaboration began with the request to design a fluid dynamic system to replicate the human circulatory system. Since such a system could be modeled as a series of parallel and series ducts of varying diameter, faculty in fluid mechanics and dynamic systems and controls collaborated to design a "mock circulation system." In addition, department faculty collaborated with the Hershey Faculty physicians in designing and testing the artificial heart. In vivo experiments were also conducted at Hershey on Holstein calves. The fluid mechanics research was led by John A. Brighton. J. A. Brighton was instrumental in creating the Bioengineering Division of ASME and served as the first editor of its journal.

John Brighton had an illustrious academic career both at Penn State and at other academic institutions. John Brighton became the executive vice president and provost of Penn State from 1991-1999. Prior to his appointment as provost, Brighton served as dean of the College of Engineering at Penn State from 1988-1991; director of the School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1982-1988; and as chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University from 1977 -1982. Brighton served as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University prior to coming to Penn State in 1965, where he worked his way through the academic ranks to become a professor of mechanical engineering. When Brighton completed his tenure as provost in June 1999, he accepted an appointment from Penn State President Graham Spanier to serve as University Professor, with broad responsibility to lead a University-wide effort to develop new methods of learning and improvements in teaching through the creation of a new consortium on teaching and learning. The Teaching and Learning Consortium, which Brighton chaired, included the leadership of key units such as the Leonhard Center in the College of Engineering, the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning, the Schreyer Honors College, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, and the Office of Undergraduate Education, among others. In May 2002, John A. Brighton, chairman of the Teaching and Learning Consortium (TLC) and executive vice president and provost emeritus, announced his plans to leave Penn State at the end of June to accept the position as provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at National-Louis University with headquarters in Chicago. He left an indelible mark on the Penn State community that will not be forgotten. Rodney A. Erickson, executive vice president and provost at Penn State had this to say about Brighton's departure from Penn State:

"John has done so much for this University during his tenure here. He helped to shape the direction of the University while provost, and for the last three years he has been the driving force behind the successes of the Teaching and Learning Consortium. He was committed to improving the learning experience for students while still provost, and he has devoted his efforts full time to that goal during his time with the TLC. He has laid a strong foundation on which the University will continue to build in the area of improving the way students learn. "

Penn State's mock circulation system has become the standard used by the National Institutes of Health. In 1985, the "Penn State Heart" was implanted in a human for the first time.

Mock circulation loop for artifical heart research.

In 1971, H. A. Levine of the class of 1935 created the H. A. Everett Memorial Scholarship and made the first contribution. Contributions from other alumni and friends of Everett followed. The principal has grown to $18,000 and the interest provides scholarships to outstanding undergraduates who have financial need. In 1973, the Wharton Memorial Scholarship was created by the Wharton Foundation in memory of Joseph B. Wharton, who was a mechanical engineering graduate in the class of 1908. The principal has grown to $39,000 and the interest provides scholarships to outstanding seniors.

The period from 1968 to 1972 was a time of uncertainty and changing national priorities. The assassination of several political figures, civil-rights strife, the unpopular war in Vietnam, and deepening economic problems transformed U.S. society. The national mood became introspective. Personal values, institutional goals, career plans were no longer matters anyone could take for granted. No serious student disruptions, such as happened elsewhere in the United States, took place at Penn State, but the attitudes of students toward engineering changed. Careers in engineering fell out of fashion as careers addressing inequities in U.S. society attracted more students. The war in Vietnam proved to be costly, and Congress reduced expenditures for weapons and defense. Reduced funding and restricted employment opportunities for graduating engineers reinforced the uneasiness of entering freshmen about choosing careers in engineering. Engineering enrollments fell.

Social unrest resulted in significant changes in the ways faculty shared responsibility in running universities. In the early 1970s, the trustees reorganized the University Faculty Senate in response to these changes and in part to thwart attempts to unionize the faculty, which at the time numbered approximately 5,000, about a third of whom were employed at the Commonwealth Campuses, where working conditions were perceived to be less favorable than at University Park. The faculty, through their representatives in the Senate, were granted sole responsibility for the content and standards of academic programs. Budgetary control and administrative practices remained the purview of the administration. Ostensibly, standards of admission to the University were also the responsibility of the faculty, but in order to maintain enrollments at the Commonwealth Campuses in the late 1970s, some authority was ceded to the administration. Nonetheless the authority of the faculty in matters of program and academic standards was, and is, considered very important.

In 1975, the University adopted elaborate promotion and tenure procedures in which elected faculty within the department evaluated individuals for tenure and promotion independently of the evaluation by the department head. Individuals recommended for promotion and tenure were then reviewed by a college promotion and tenure committee composed of faculty from several departments. The dean then reviewed the individuals and, if approval was obtained at all four levels, the promotion and tenure recommendations were forwarded to the University Promotion and Tenure Committee, composed of faculty and administrators. Following their review, the University President approved or disapproved the recommendations. The process was arduous, time-consuming, and required preparing extensive documents. Nonetheless involvement in "governance" (as it was called) was a responsibility faculty members took seriously. For young faculty members asked to undergo the rigors of such scrutiny, it was (and remains) a period of acute anxiety.

In 1976, the University Faculty Senate approved the creation of a University Scholars Program in which outstanding undergraduate students could enroll in honors courses with restricted enrollment and more stringent standards. Approximately twenty mechanical engineering students per year have elected to enter the program since that time. These students are encouraged to consider graduate study, particularly at Penn State. Not all qualified students choose to enroll in the program, but those who do receive a superior education. Not only are their classes small and standards high, but the students receive more personal attention from their academic advisers and instructors.

From 1977 to the present, rapid rises in both undergraduate and graduate enrollments affected instruction and advising. In 1980, the department faculty decided to eliminate the long-standing practice of meeting each term with their advisers. Such a decision had been adopted by most colleges at Penn State years before and was part of a larger policy to abandon the surrogate-parental function that the University had assumed since its founding. Advising was perceived frequently to be merely a matter of signing forms, and both students and faculty lost interest in other aspects of the process, such as discussing career plans and engaging in general dialogue. Computer-aided registration practices adopted in 1984 eliminated the need for advisers' signature. Because of these decisions, contact between the mechanical engineering faculty and students today has been reduced. The majority of students begin at a Commonwealth Campus and come to University Park for only two years. During the junior year, mechanical engineering students attend huge classes (with enrollments from one hundred to three hundred students) and have little opportunity to meet with their instructors. A survey taken in 1983 showed that 28 percent of the graduating seniors took no technical electives in mechanical engineering (four technical electives are required); 25 percent take only one elective in mechanical engineering. While the faculty deplore this situation, faculty shortages make it impossible to implement stricter standards.

In the late 1970s, rising costs caused both industry and the public to conserve energy. The public has also become profoundly concerned about preserving the quality of the environment. These developments, together with the end of the Vietnam War, turned students' interests to pragmatic issues, and enrollment in engineering began to climb rapidly. Coincident with these changes, the University became increasingly dependent on tuition as the state's contribution (in percent) to the overall University budget decreased. The trend has continued to the present. The charts below shows that tuition increased as the state's appropriation proportionally decreased. The level of support the legislature provided could no longer be depended on, and the administration looked to tuition and private contributions from alumni, corporations, and foundations for relief.

Growing engineering enrollment continued to have an adverse effect on the quality of instruction. The chart above shows the size of the mechanical engineering student body and faculty since 1889. The student-faculty ratio today is nearly ten times what it was several decades ago. To cope with huge student-faculty ratios and in keeping with the department's emphasis on research, class size was allowed to grow. Junior-year core courses, which had thirty students through the 1960s, were allowed to grow to several hundred in the 1980s. With large classes, assignments were not collected for evaluation as in previous years. Midterm and final examinations have assumed great importance since they alone determine students' final grades. Laboratories, once the distinguishing feature of an engineering education, have virtually disappeared. The quality of lecturing has assumed a greater importance, and numerous student evaluations of the faculty are conducted for the dean, department head, and classroom instructors to determine whether students believe they are gaining a good education.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the student-faculty ratio in public institutions awarding the Ph.D. was 11.7 in academic year 1984-85. Assuming that a graduating class includes one-fourth of the total enrollment, the ratio of graduating seniors to faculty should be approximately three. The chart above shows that in 1984-85 the ratio in mechanical engineering was more than twice this figure. Moreover, since approximately 30 percent of the faculty is supported by research, the Full-time equivalent (FTE) faculty" is even higher. Thus, in 1985, the ratio of graduating seniors to "full-time equivalent faculty" was approximately fifteen to one. In 1985, the University had the largest undergraduate enrollment in engineering (7,804) in the United States, and one out of every fifty graduating engineers in the United States was from Penn State.

In 1985, the department received a three-year accreditation from ABET. Within the following three years, steps must be taken to reduce class size, increase the use of computers in courses, and reinstitute laboratories and better advising practices. This is the first time in decades that the department has not received a favorable review and full-term accreditation for six years. Other departments in the college received similar reviews. In the fall of 1985, engineering students were required to pay a $200-per-year surcharge to enroll in engineering-the surcharge was earmarked for equipment to improve instructional laboratories.

University President Bryce Jordan set as his primary goal the establishment of Penn State as a premier research university. The college and department administration fully support this effort. The desire of President Jordan to emphasize Penn State's role as a research university was a clear statement that research will occupy the central role in the University's affairs and a more pronounced role than it has ever had in the University's and department's history. It was clearly understood by the faculty that the acquisition of research funds and the publication of research in prestigious journals would become increasingly important in future years.

In 1981, N. J. Palladino retired as dean of engineering and was immediately appointed by President Reagan to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Noted for his firm grip on the facts and his attention to detail, he was a conservative man of unquestioned personal and professional integrity, highly respected by the faculty. The new dean of engineering was Wilbur L. Meier, Jr., formerly the head of industrial engineering at Purdue. By the late 1970s, University President Oswald and Provost E. D. Eddy expected college deans to acquire funds from industry and government. The day-to-day administration of colleges was increasingly delegated to assistants as acquiring new revenues became singularly important. New standards of performance required new administrative talents. Dean Meier began to search for department heads with such qualifications.

During the tenure of D. R. Olson as department head, the computing capabilities of the department grew rapidly, so that by 1982 the department had the best computing facilities of any department in the college. In a small room on the renovated second floor, Olson installed computer terminals wired to the University's mainframe computer. Soon printers and computer graphics units were added. Within a few years, he purchased computer terminals for every faculty office. With the appearance of personal computers in the late 1970s, Olson began plans to install a personal computer in each faculty member's office.

In December 1982, D. R. Olson retired after twenty-one years of service, including twelve as department head. Professor G. M. Faeth served as acting head until he took a leave of absence to assume a post with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Professor C. H. Wolgemuth served as acting head until June 1984, when Harold R. Jacobs became department head.

D. R. Olson was a man of impeccable scholarly standards. He knew what good scholarship was and expected it of the faculty. The quality and volume of research grew steadily during his tenure as department head. Nowhere are these standards more evident than in the career of one of his first graduate students, Gerard M. Faeth. G. M. Faeth was graduated from Union College in 1955 and accepted a graduate assistantship at Penn State as a master's degree student in A. W. Hussman's diesel engine laboratory. Hussman had joined Penn State as a colleague of P. H. Schweitzer after World War II. Under Hussman's tutelage, Faeth learned the fundamentals of experimental research. In 1962, when Hussman left Penn State to become professor of automotive engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Munich, Faeth became a doctoral student of D. R. Olson. In 1965, Faeth received a Ph.D. and was offered a joint appointment in the department and the ORL. The department did not, as a rule, hire its graduates upon completion of their degrees, but Faeth was an exception. He progressed rapidly, and the quality of his research attracted the attention of research program managers in federal agencies and brought him professional awards, invited review papers, journal editorships, and international acclaim. He and D. R. Olson often collaborated, and many of their doctoral students assumed influential positions in industry and academia. In 1985, after twenty-eight years of service, Faeth retired from Penn State and was named the Arthur B. Modine Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. The scholarly standards of D. R. Olson and G. M. Faeth are those the University will need if it is to become a premier research university.