A MAN OF VISION

ASEE Prism, Jan 2007 by Home-Douglas, Pierre

PENN STATE DEAN DAVID WORMLEY HAS A LOT ON HIS PLATE. NOT ONLY DOES HE OVERSEE ONE OF THE NATION'S LARGEST ENGINEERING PROGRAMS, HE IS ALSO PRESIDENT OF ASEE.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON. That's true of a number of engineers, and David Wormley, the dean of engineering at Penn State and the president of ASEE, is no exception. His father was a mechanical engineer and a factory manager for John Deere when David was growing up in Dubuque, Iowa. "I used to walk through the factory on quite a few Saturday mornings and was interested in both the design and manufacturing part of engineering, so when the time came to make my decision, it seemed natural to go into mechanical engineering." He assumed that, like his father, he would one day end up in industry. That changed when he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The fact that he chose MIT was the result of one of those seemingly insignificant events that sometimes carry life-changing possibilities. A representative from the university came to Dubuque to give a talk when Wormley was in the ninth grade. "I remember looking over at my friend," Wormley recalls, "and we said, 'Well, let's go to MIT. It sounds like a great place.'" Three years later, when Wormley was trying to decide where to go to college, he remembered that information session and applied to MIT. At the time, he was living in Germany where his father managed another John Deere plant. He was accepted and headed to Boston in late summer of 1958. A surprise was in store. "A couple of days into the fall semester I was walking along the Charles River and looked up and there was my friend from Dubuque. He had come to MIT to study engineering, too."

Wormley spent the next decade racking up his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Along the way he developed a love for teaching that steered him away from industry and into academia. "I helped develop courses in systems and dynamics and taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and enjoyed it very much. There was always a good opportunity at MIT to be involved in both teaching and research." He joined the teaching faculty at his alma mater in 1968 and moved up through the ranks, becoming department head and associate dean of engineering, before leaving to become Penn State's dean of engineering in 1992 where he has been ever since.

The work, he says, is multifaceted and challenging. "There are lots of elements to it. You're working with faculty, department heads, as well as university administration to advance engineering education and research in your college." That requires a good understanding of the cultural differences of the various disciplines. "Different disciplines have different ways of doing things. This not only applies in your college but throughout the university. You have to articulate the college's goals and aspiration to your own faculty, as well as to your university administration, to alumni, donors and industrial partners."

According to Jim Melsa, dean emeritus of Iowa State's College of Engineering and president-elect of ASEE, Wormley has both the requisite intellectual and social skills for the job. "First of all, Dave is not only a deep thinker but a charming individual as well. He makes you feel important even though he's in an important position himself-the type of person you'd like to go to dinner with. Also, he leads in a way so he accomplishes what he is trying to achieve but people at the end think 'We did it ourselves.' He convinces people that his vision is their vision, and they go about working diligently and pleasantly for him. He is a leader who leads very quietly-and very effectively."

Partnership With Industry

One of the areas where Penn State has taken an aggressive role is in promoting close cooperation between industry and the university. Wormley points to the Learning Factory, which began shortly after he arrived at Penn State, as a great example of this partnership. The program, created in conjunction with faculty from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, is used for many industry-sponsored projects, where industry defines what the objectives are and students take an idea and follow it right through to prototype. The lessons students learn in the Learning Factory are invaluable. "It's important for students to have ideas, conceptualize them and evaluate them. We hope to expand the Learning Factory to accommodate even more students in the future," he says.

Penn State also offers a wide array of co-ops and internships. Although the university is not one of the few schools that have co-ops as a requirement to graduate, Wormley says many of his engineering students are keen participants in the program, including a growing number who work abroad in Europe and Asia. "International experience is becoming more and more important all the time," he says. "One of our themes is that our graduates should aspire to become world-class engineers, and one attribute of that is to become more aware of the world around. Many projects now are jointly undertaken by U.S. engineers with Asian and European engineers. This international experience will give them a much broader global perspective. Also, in the future our engineers will not only be competing with these graduates from places like China and India and Europe but co-operating with them as well."