The First 50 Yea

BRENDAN O’HALLARNAuthor

OUTER BANKS PRESSPublisher

www.outerbankspress.com

Built

Ground UpFrom e

Engineering at Old Dominion University

Built

Ground Up

OUTER BANKS PRESS

BRENDAN O’HALLARN

The First 50 Yea ENGINEERING AT OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY

Built

Ground UpFrom e

Built From the Ground UpTHE FIRST 50 YEARS OF

ENGINEERING AT OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY

Published in 2012 by Outer Banks Press for Old Dominion UniversityFrank Batten College of Engineering and Technology

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, without express written permission from the publisher.Printed in China

All images and text © Old Dominion University

ISBN: 978-0-9778924-7-1

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data available upon request

TEXT: Brendan O’Hallarn

DESIGN: Linda L. Lauby, Outer Banks Press

PHOTOGRAPHY: Linda L. Lauby, Crystal Street, Chuck Thomas

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS: Old Dominion University Archives

Copies of this book are available from the Old Dominion University Bookstore and from theoffice of the Dean of Engineering.

FRANK BATTEN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

102 Kaufman Hall | Norfolk, Virginia 23529 | 757.683.3789engineer@odu.edu | www.eng.odu.edu

OUTER BANKS PRESS

75 East Dogwood Trail | Kitty Hawk, North Carolina 27949 | 252.261.0612mail@outerbankspress.com | www.outerbankspress.com

MISSION STATEMENT

In accordance with the mission of Old Dominion University,

the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology

promotes the advancement of engineering knowledge,

both in creation and dissemination, by providing

successful graduates and a continuously improving

learning envoronment to its constituents,

while maintaining high ethical,

multicultural and global standards.

OKTAY BAYSAL, Dean

OSMAN AKAN, Associate Dean

LINDA VAHALA, Associate Dean

BERNDT BOHM, Assistant Dean

PRESIDENT’S FOREWORDJOHN R. BRODERICK iii

DEAN’S FOREWORDOKTAY BAYSAL iv

BREAKING GROUNDA NEW ENGINEERING BUILDING 1

CHAPTER 1AN ENGINEERING SCHOOL FOR NORFOLK 5

CHAPTER 2THE EARLY YEARS 25

CHAPTER 3THE COLLEGE GROWS UP 45

CHAPTER 4MAKING AN IMPACT 65

CHAPTER 5POSITIONED FOR THE FUTURE 83

FIFTY AT FIFTYNOTABLE LANDMARKS 83

Contents

ii iii

Named for the first Rector of Old Dominion University’s Board ofVisitors, Frank Batten, the College has graduates spanning theglobe, making their mark in countless ways, as entrepreneurs, withFortune 500 firms, as captains of nuclear submarines, and in a myriadof government agencies and non-profits.

In my nearly 20 years at Old Dominion University, I’ve seen theingenuity and passion of Batten College engineers on display almostevery day. Initiatives like the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, ODUBusiness Gateway, and the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and SimulationCenter contribute greatly to the economy of Hampton Roads and theCommonwealth of Virginia.

Three Old Dominion engineering faculty have been recognized bythe State Council for Higher Education in Virginia with outstandingfaculty awards: Sushil Chaturvedi, Gregory Selby and Bill Stanley.

The accomplishments of our engineering students are numerousas well, including environmental engineering student Samantha Salviabeing named Old Dominion University’s first (and still only) RhodesScholar in 1996. W. Channing Blackwell, a 1999 civil engineeringgraduate, became the first undergraduate student in Virginia historyto earn a U.S. patent.

And momentum continues to build. The new home of engineeringat Old Dominion, the Systems Research and Academics Building, willopen in 2014. Located between Kaufman Hall and Perry Library, itwill house a state-of-the-art clean room, lasers lab, plasma science lab,dynamic environment simulation lab, as well as four large studentprojects studios. I’m confident it will be the site of many discoveries.

To Dean Oktay Baysal and the entire faculty, staX and studentbody of the Old Dominion University Batten College of Engineeringand Technology, congratulations. I look forward to the excitingdiscoveries of the next 50 years.

Sincerely,

John R. Broderick

President, Old Dominion University

Congratulations to the Frank Batten College of Engineering andTechnology for 50 years of groundbreaking research, innovativeteaching and award-winning scholarship.

From its roots as a division of the Virginia Polytechnic Institutein the 1930s, the College has grown into a hub of multidisciplinaryexcellence. Its research breakthroughs in modeling and simulation,bioelectrics, machine vision and system of systems engineering haveearned acclaim for Old Dominion University, not only in Virginia, butworldwide.

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Since its inaugural class of 12 students, the College can now boastmore than 3,200 students currently enrolled, more than 14,000 alumniliving worldwide, and it confers about 600 degrees every year. We areproud of our modest beginnings and those milestones that have ledthis great College to what it is today. That is why I look to the history ofODU Engineering as my guiding light each day I serve this remarkableschool as its dean. Here’s to many more trailblazing years of ODU’sBatten College of Engineering!

With my best wishes,

Oktay Baysal

Dean, The Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology

v

In our first 50 years, we have been advancing engineering andtechnology for the community, region, and the world. As the FrankBatten College of Engineering and Technology at Old DominionUniversity celebrates its 50th anniversary year, I would like to takea brief look back, specifically through the lens of the firsts weintroduced, those milestones that have brought the college to be thepowerhouse that I am fortunate to lead today.

The College was the first at Old Dominion University to oXer aPh.D. program, and it produced its first Ph.D. graduate. The Collegedeveloped ODU’s first International Collaborative Graduate programs,with 50 alumni to date.

We were the first College at Old Dominion to begin oXering graduateclasses via televised distance learning, the first to oXer courses at thePeninsula Graduate Engineering Center, now simply the PeninsulaCenter for Higher Education, and we developed the first asynchronousdistance-delivered degree program of ODU – Master of EngineeringManagement CD-ROM program.

In the state, Old Dominion was the first university to offerengineering management and engineering technology degreeprograms, and departments. In the nation, ODU established thefirst modeling, simulation and visualization engineering department,and its first-ever Ph.D. graduate in modeling and simulation.

Our close collaboration with the NASA Langley ResearchCenter aided in the transformation of ODU engineering to becomea research-intensive university, producing hundreds of graduatestudents and degrees, and tens of millions of dollars of funding forgroundbreaking research.

Through the formation of very successful enterprise centers,ODU Engineering helped transform the University to a research-andoutreach-intensive focus. Centers such as the Virginia Modeling,Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk, the Applied ResearchCenter in Newport News, and the Frank Reidy Center forBioelectrics, Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, and Business Gatewayin our Research Park, have each made a tangible contribution toadvancing the University’s goals.

Paving the Way for the State’s MostAdvanced University Engineering Building

Breaking Ground

ODU President John R. Broderick, engineering student Brittany Gesner, Batten College Dean Oktay Baysal,Board of Visitors student representativeand engineering student Kevin Muchiri, and Virginia Delegate

John A. Cosgrove turn earth at the groundbreaking for the new Systems Research and Academic Building.

A contingency plan for the rain was prepared, but it couldn’t possiblyhave been less necessary.

Instead, the large, enthusiastic crowd that gathered in a fenced-oXformer parking lot between the Kaufman Engineering Building andPerry Library on the Old Dominion University campus would havebeen well served to smear healthy doses of sunscreen.

Almost the entire faculty and staX of the Frank Batten Collegeof Engineering and Technology, along with University President JohnR. Broderick, Provost Carol Simpson, local dignitaries and even long-retired faculty members gathered in the sun-drenched space tocelebrate the Batten College of Engineering and Technology’s future.

The occasion was the October 5, 2012 groundbreaking for thenew 50,500-square-foot Engineering Systems Building, also markingthe oWcial kick-oX of the College of Engineering’s 50th anniversarycelebration. Only steps from Kaufman Hall, the new building isscheduled for completion in spring of 2014, and will feature a state-of-the-art clean room, a lasers lab, a plasma science lab and a dynamicenvironment simulation lab, as well as four large student project studios.

President Broderick, in his remarks, stressed the new engineeringbuilding will be tangible proof of Old Dominion’s commitment tograduating students in the vital STEM-H fields of science, technology,engineering, math and health sciences.

Speaking on behalf of the engineering faculty, Batten EndowedChair in Biomedical Engineering Stephen Knisley, professor ofmechanical and aerospace engineering, echoed how moving from47-year-old Kaufman Hall to the state’s most advanced universityengineering building will be a distinction for Old Dominion.

Knisley said he hoped to see students “making a diXerence” with theprojects they tackle in the new building, such as the new volunteerpartnership in which Old Dominion’s engineering students test medicalequipment for the non-profit advocacy group Physicians for Peace.

Dean Oktay Baysal, who led the celebration, referenced the College’smany accomplishments, from breakthroughs in bio-engineering andmodeling and simulation, to the grant-funded research of faculty inevery engineering discipline, to the successes of Old Dominion graduatesin the workforce and in other academic programs. Baysal said the newbuilding will “oXer new opportunities for student learning and facultyresearch while working toward the vision of becoming a world-classengineering college connecting knowledge, practice and research.”

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The entire day spoke about the future, but John Weese,who served as dean of the College of Engineering from 1974 to1982, couldn’t help but think about the past. Despite leaving OldDominion University in 1983 to become director of the mechanicalengineering and mechanics division of the National ScienceFoundation, Weese has kept in close contact with the school. Hestill serves on the ODU Engineering advisory board. He and hiswife, Betty, had traveled from Annapolis, Maryland to attend thegroundbreaking ceremony.

Looking around at the bustling event – the constructionkick-oX for a state-of-the-art engineering building – Weese wasdecidedly reflective. “It really is amazing how far this school hascome,” he said. “You feel very good about things like that. It’s verysatisfying to go back and take a look at it.”

CHAPTER 1AN ENGINEERING SCHOOLFOR NORFOLK

E. B. Norris, VPI ’s dean of engineering, said that the programwould allow the school to bring its strengths in technical education“directly to the people in this area who are unable to go away for afour-year college training.” Because the College of William and Mary’scurriculum did not include engineering education, it was a goodmatch, and engineering classes began in the old Larchmont School inthe fall semester of 1931.

Among the first faculty members hired was Lewis W. Webb Jr.,who would go on to be president of the school from 1946 to 1969. In aseries of interviews with historian and Old Dominion UniversityArchivist James Sweeney, Webb described his journey back to hishometown school in the summer of 1932:

“I’m a native of Norfolk, and my first interest was in engineering,as my father was an electrical engineer, and I guess I absorbed a greatdeal of his interest in things. And so, I elected to go to the VirginiaPolytechnic Institute. This was back in the days just prior to thedepression. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1931.

“In 1931, there were no job openings for electrical engineers. . .orany engineer. And so, I decided to go back to graduate school. Aftergetting my master’s degree, I still didn’t have any job and was readyto leave the VPI campus when the dean of engineering called me andasked me if I wanted a job. I said, very positively, I’d take it. He said,

7

Old Dominion University’s School of Engineering was founded onJuly 1, 1962. But the roots of engineering on the Norfolk campusstretch back three decades earlier.

In 1930, five years after the idea was first proposed, the College ofWilliam and Mary established its Norfolk Division, using the oldLarchmont School on Hampton Boulevard to teach college classes inNorfolk. At the time, Norfolk was the largest English-speaking cityin the world without an institution of higher learning. The GreatDepression had set in worldwide, and southeastern Virginia was hardhit. The new school, however, attracted students right away, due in nosmall part to the fact Norfolk residents could no longer aXord totravel to attend post-secondary school.

The following year, an agreement was struck between Williamand Mary President J. A. C. Chandler and Julian A. Burruss, presidentof Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Tech) to oXer the firsttwo years of its standard engineering program through cooperativeeducation in Norfolk. A member of the VPI faculty, W. ForrestHarrington, was dispatched to Norfolk to found and supervisethe program.

6

Below: Classes at the NorfolkDivision of the College of Williamand Mary-VPI were held in the oldLarchmont Elementary School buildingin Norfolk.

Opposite: VPI student body, 1935,in front of the old Larchmont School.

‘But you don’t know what it is,’ and I said, ‘Thatdoesn’t make any diXerence; I’ll take the job.’ Hesaid to report tomorrow morning to Norfolk.”

Webb joined the faculty in 1932, along withEdward White, his roommate at VPI. Theyteamed up with Harrington, and helped broadenthe course oXerings to include survey engineeringand applied mathematics.

Webb said the value of the program wasreinforced regularly in the financial strugglesfaced by the students’ families. It was truly aterrible time for families all across America.

“We came and started the summer program inJune of 1932,” said Webb. “It was a dismal year formost people, as jobs were practically unattainable,and this little Division, which was being formed inNorfolk, survived simply because people didn’thave enough money to send their children to VPIor send them to William and Mary.”

A student could study at the Norfolk Divisionfor $90 per year. “So, if the parents could aXord to

keep him fed, they could send their child tocollege, whereas they couldn’t aXord to send himto William and Mary or VPI and pay their roomand board along with the tuition,” Webb said.

Edward White’s background was similar tothat of his colleague Webb in that he was born andreared in Norfolk, and attended engineering schoolat VPI. White majored in electrical engineering.

Graduating with a bachelor of science in 1931,White faced the same economic realities ofmany others enduring the Depression, so he wentback to VPI as a student assistant in the physicsdepartment, earning his master of science inelectrical engineering.

With a job lined up in Norfolk with the CarryEngineering Company, White was excited to leavethe academic world for work as an air conditioningfield engineer. But only days before his job was tobegin, White was informed by Dean Norris at VPIthat his employment contract was being rescinded.In an interview with University Archivist Sweeney,White explained what happened next:

98

Studying in Tidewater

In the 1931-32 Bulletin of the Norfolk Division of theCollege of William and Mary, readers learned of afirst-time partnership betweenWilliam and Mary and VirginiaPolytechnic Institute to provideengineering instruction in theNorfolk area.

“The Virginia Polytechnic Institute,”the Bulletin announced, “through acooperative arrangement with theNorfolk Division of the College ofWilliam and Mary, is offering tothe young men of Tidewater,Virginia the first two years of itsstandard engineering courses. Thisplan makes it possible for studentsof the Norfolk community to taketheir first two years’ work in the VPI engineering coursesat home and to carry a program which, if satisfactorily

completed, will ensure admission to the junior class ofthe VPI, or of other standard engineering schools, with

full credit.”

In case there were worries aboutNorfolk engineering studentsreceiving an inferior engineeringeducation, the Bulletin continued:“The technical courses inengineering are taught by regularmembers of the Virginia PolytechnicInstitute faculty, who have beenassigned to teach this work in theNorfolk Division. The studentswho enroll for the engineeringcourses are carried on the rolls asstudents of the Virginia PolytechnicInstitute.”

as Students of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Left: December 1960pre-registration for engineers.Students (from left): BobbyNelson, Gary Smyle andAllan Kjeldsen, with EdwardL. White of the engineeringdepartment.

Opposite: During the firstyear of instruction, 10 facultymembers taught engineeringto 200 students in the formerLarchmont Elementary School.

The students who enrollfor the engineering

courses are carried onthe rolls as students ofthe Virginia Polytechnic

Institute.

News, Virginia. George Webb said that his father possessed an abidingdesire to help better the lives of his fellow citizens.

“He really, very early on, got this burning drive to build something[in Norfolk] for people who were not privileged to be able to go toWilliam and Mary, or go away to school,” George Webb said.

“Because he was an engineer, he had this visual way of dealing withthings. He would take Styrofoam and cut out these little blocks to bedormitories. . . .There are some pictures of him with these things hemade at home that he brought to community clubs and to the statelegislature, showing his vision of where the Division ought to go.

“We saw a lot of activity, and that became the life of the family. Itwas like a family business, and we all did things, including his parentsand my mom’s parents. Everybody sort of pitched in.”

The Norfolk Division began to offer evening classes in 1935, toeducate students who couldn’t aXord to leave whatever employmentthey had secured in order to attend school full time. That year alsosaw the first construction on campus specific to the Norfolk Division– physical growth that was helped considerably by an alliance withthe City of Norfolk.

With nearly 500 students enrolled, the Norfolk Division had out-grown the former Larchmont School. William and Mary PresidentChandler put forth an ambitious proposal for a classroom building andgymnasium, as well as a stadium.

The stadium, which still stands as S. B. Ballard Stadium at ForemanField, was unimaginably large for such a small college division. It wasfunded by applications to various Depression-era government agenciesand completed in partnership with the City of Norfolk, which wasineligible for such program funding.

After the initial stadium project was rejected, the school reappliedunder the Virginia Emergency Relief Association and the federal WorksProgress Administration, pledging to turn five acres of propertydeeded by the City of Norfolk to the College. The project was approvedJune 18, 1935, for a stadium that seated 17,500, more than 20 times theenrollment of the Norfolk Division at the time.

By the end of the decade, the Norfolk Division of the College ofWilliam and Mary-VPI had a faculty of 24, teaching a student body of522. But growth in engineering education at the Norfolk Division wasabout to explode.

WORLD WAR II CONTRIBUTES TO GROWTH

In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, beginning theSecond World War. Despite friendly relations with Great Britain and

11

“The Dean explained that he had something inour back yard that might entertain us until thingsgot better. And what I was saying also goes truefor Lewis Webb – of course, he and I were collegemates together. And so he said, until things gotbetter, why not try teaching?”

So Edward White became an engineeringfaculty member in 1932, and “trying teaching”worked out pretty well. His interview withSweeney was conducted in 1974, following White’sretirement from Old Dominion, where he taughtfor 42 years.

Throughout the 1930s, the Norfolk Divisiongrew gradually. Money was exceedingly hard tofind, as the Great Depression aXected institutionsof higher learning as hard as individuals.

The Norfolk Division’s entire teaching staX –and all of its classes – were housed in the oldLarchmont Elementary School. Professors’offices were constructed from former cloak rooms.According to Lewis Webb, it was hardly plush.But he said that closeness also created a feeling of

esprit de corps among the small staX.

“It was quite cozy, and everyone knew eachother,” Webb said. “In the beginning, when I firstcame, there were 10 faculty members, about 200students. Some of the faculty members werecommuting from William and Mary, and so theywere part time; I think we had six full-time andfour part-time faculty members. We were assignedto teach most anything that came up.”

Despite the school’s modest scope, Webb saidthe Norfolk Division attracted good students rightaway. These were students who would have goneaway to study at university, but whose plans werealtered by the Depression.

“Those students were very good students, andI see them from time to time now. They are topengineers in the city, in the state, and in thecountry,” he said.

George Webb, Lewis Webb’s son, would go onto his own 40-plus-year career as a professor, atTulane University in New Orleans, and atChristopher Newport University in Newport

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Opposite: Starting with the creationof an Aircraft Instruments Institute in1938, the Norfolk Division contributedstrongly to America’s war effort. Apilot training program was added in1940, also before America’s entryinto World War II.

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night courses were being offeredfor free at the Norfolk Division ofVPI, funded by a federal grant.

Up to 300 workers would receiveeducation in the following skilledtrades: surveying and topographicmapping; engineering principlesof aircraft; explosives productionand inspection; application ofaircraft carburetion; aircraftaccessories; welding aviationmaterials; application of aircraftpower plants; sheet metal layoutfor aircraft production; electro-plating for aviation; and heattreatment of materials.

Clearly, this was a college preparing for war. LewisWebb was thinking of keeping his faculty working.

“In order to keep the faculty busy, we started a war-training program,” Webb told James Sweeney. “It wascalled an engineering defense training program to startwith. In fact, the first courses that were taught on avocational level were taught inthe physics department.”

Immediately following the attackon Pearl Harbor, the EngineeringDefense Training Program changedits name to the Engineering WarTraining Program. The NorfolkDivision was divided into a daycollege and an evening college,allowing it to offer both wartraining and vocational courses.As the global conflict draggedon, more students signed up forwar training, and fewer for thevocational courses.

The courses were a changebecause they offered womenan equal opportunity to tacklethe challenging work. And theyoccupied whatever space oncampus could be made available.Lewis Webb’s son George saidhe remembers an aunt workingon the skeleton of a Piper Cubaircraft under the bleachers of Foreman Field, learningaviation concepts.

Webb told Sweeney that the War Training Programgave faculty who were qualified an opportunity to keep

working. “And from that, it developed into engineeringscience management war training after the war started.This area, this program that we had, was the largestarea on the East Coast – the greatest number of studentsalong the East Coast, taking these programs. We hadseveral thousand when it was at its peak. But the mainpurpose was to keep your faculty busy and also to serve

the defense and war needs ofthe community.”

Engineering professor EdwardWhite said it was quite aneffort. He said that they taughtclasses day and evening,placing an added burden onthe Division’s meager supportstaff, as well as its faculty.

The war ended with two majorimpacts to the Norfolk Division.The applied education offeredat the war college ended upbeing rolled into what wouldbecome the Technical Institute.It would coexist with theengineering school across thestreet before merging with OldDominion’s School of Engineeringmore than two decades later.

As well, the veterans thatreturned from the Second WorldWar were serious-minded and

determined, and they were adamant that the NorfolkDivision achieve its independence from William andMary, and attain its status as a four-year college.

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War College

For a few years in the 1940s, the Norfolk Division ofVirginia Polytechnic Institute had the most engineeringstudents of any school on the East Coast. This was thanksto a forward-thinking decision by Division leaders andthe military to invest in war preparedness well before theUnited States officially enteredthe war.

The initial spark was a CivilianPilot Training Program created inOctober 1939 by the Civil AviationAuthority, using instructors fromNaval Air Station Norfolk. Warwas already under way in Europeand Asia, and though the UnitedStates wouldn’t enter the war untilDecember 1941, faculty memberW. Forrest Harrington, coordinatorof the VPI program in Norfolk,enlisted as a Navy cryptographer.

The Civilian Pilot Training Program, part of America’snational defense plan, offered four full college creditsfor aeronautics students who had at least two years ofcollege credits.

The program, open to American citizens between the agesof 19 and 26 who met the physical strength requirements,graduated its first class of licensed pilots in May 1940.

The fact that women were eligible to be equal participantsin the program proved irresistible to local media.

“Pretty, blonde Sarah Frances Potts, 19-year-old studentof the Norfolk Division, College of William and Mary,VPI, has learned to fly an airplane even before knowing

how to operate an automobile,”The Virginian-Pilot newspaperreported. “The comely youngaviatrix, who has yet to drive anautomobile, completed her firstsolo flight at the Norfolk MunicipalAirport a few days ago.

“She is one of a group of 10Norfolk Division students who arelearning to fly at the NorfolkAviation School under the CivilianPilot Training Program sponsored

by the Civil Aeronautics Authority.”

As the American entry into the Second World War grewcloser, the federal Department of Education set up itsEngineering Defense Training Program, a series ofcourses conducted by select schools of engineeringthroughout the United States. The Norfolk Division programwas accepted because it was part of VPI.

Under the headline “Defense Courses,” the NorfolkNews-Index reported on February 6, 1941 that the new

The Norfolk Division Leads the Fight at Home

During World War II, more engineeringstudents attended the Norfolk Division ofVirginia Polytechnic Institute than anyother school on the East Coast, thanks tothe Engineering War Training Program.Students studied welding and sheetmetal layout, aviation principles (left andopposite top), and offered women anequal opportunity to tackle the importantwork (opposite bottom).

Lewis Webb’s son Georgesaid he remembers an auntworking on the skeletonof a Piper Cub aircraftunder the bleachers of

Foreman Field.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Defense Training Programbecame the War Training Program. The program was split intotraditional vocational engineering studies, and the war-trainingcourses, which proved much more popular. The demand for trainingplaced such a strain on the campus that makeshift laboratories wereset up in buildings all around campus, including the football stadium.Lewis Webb said that by the end of the war, more than 5,000 individualshad received technical instruction at the Norfolk Division, a numbergreater than that of any other East Coast school.

“The attempt to get more of the women to take part in the activitiesof the Naval Operating Base and the Naval Air Station and the NorfolkNaval Shipyard and other defense industries was made very strongly,”Webb said, “and we did have a number of women that took courses,even such courses as aircraft welding, aircraft instruments, many indrafting and photographic mapping.”

Enrollment in the Division swelled after the war, owing to an influxof returning veterans. That was a problem when it came to housingeveryone. In response, Lewis Webb, who was appointed director ofthe Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary-VPI in 1946,continued to build.

“His job was to find little pieces of stuX that could be used to helpfaculty members at an underdog school produce at a level that theVirginia Techs and William and Marys could produce at naturally,”George Webb said.

“He would, for example, go to Navy surplus sales and buy buildings.He bought these little one-story buildings that were military surplus

15

Canada, which had both declared war on Nazi Germany, the UnitedStates maintained the isolationist policies that it had adopted followingthe First World War.

However, as the United States ramped up its eXort to help supplyGreat Britain with war provisions, and possibly enter the war itself,the Norfolk Division’s proximity to Naval Station Norfolk, LangleyField and other military installations soon made it a hub of activity.

The Norfolk Division had already established an AircraftInstruments Institute in 1938, to teach students to overhaul andrepair aircraft. A month after England and her allies went to waragainst Germany, the Civil Aviation Authority created a pilot trainingprogram for civilians through the Division, tapping into Norfolk NavalAir Station’s pool of experienced pilots as flight instructors.

The first students completed the course in May 1940, becomingfull-fledged pilots. A. Lee Smith, professor and advisor to theDivision’s Aeronautics Club, provided instruction to the students inmeteorology and navigation. By December of that year, nine graduatesof the program had joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, and another ninehad enlisted with the U.S. Navy. Lee himself would leave the Divisionin 1943 to enlist in the Navy for the war eXort.

EXorts accelerated in early 1941, when the U.S. OWce of Educationselected the Norfolk Division as one of a handful of colleges to teachEngineering Defense Training. The program taught civilians a seriesof intensive engineering-related, college-grade courses, such asprinciples of aviation, sheet metal layout for aircraft production, andheat treatment of metals.

14

Above: A glimpse into ODUengineering classes of the 1940s.

Right: A spring 1943 engineeringdrawing class at the NorfolkDivision. As it was held during theSecond World War, the class wasalmost exclusively women.

Opposite: Professor Yates Stirling(with glasses, in all three photos)instructs engineering students inmathematical applications, fieldsurveying and laboratory analysis.

Program, the Institute initially consisted of shopsunder the grandstands at Foreman Field.

“We were overrun with veterans.We had lots of them. We had all wecould handle and more, too. We setup what we thought were verypractical programs,” Klinefeltertold University Archivist JamesSweeney.

Through their determinationand achievement, the focusedstudents helped the inexorablepush of the Norfolk Division towardaccreditation as a degree-granting,four-year institution, as well ashelping it to gain independencefrom the College of William andMary and Virginia PolytechnicInstitute.

In August 1953, the NorfolkDivision’s Four-Year College Committee – comprisedof Norfolk community leaders, many recruited byLewis Webb himself – met with the College of

William and Mary’s Board of Visitors. Selectprograms began to be oXered as a four-year option

that same year. By 1960, the matterhad been taken up by the VirginiaGeneral Assembly, with fullindependence granted in 1962.

A third engineering school inthe Commonwealth of Virginiawas another matter altogether.

Lewis Webb told the story toJames Sweeney in 1974. In 1961he had raised the subject of hisdesire for an engineering school inHampton Roads, and the reactioncouldn’t have been less enthusiasticfrom the University of Virginiaand Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

“It was quite obvious thatengineering training.. .shouldbe done in a situation that

was urban and engineering-oriented,” Webbtold Sweeney.

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and he put them up on campus so they could[conduct] classes,” George Webb explained.“He was an engineer in the way he managed theuniversity, taking the pieces and putting it together.”

Yates Stirling came to the Norfolk Division as afaculty member in 1946, after retiring as a Navyaviator. He said the facilities on campus wereenough to get by – barely.

“They were, you might say, adequate for themoment,” Stirling told James Sweeney in 1975.“But nothing fancy at all. We were able to followthrough on carrying out the curriculums whichhad been outlined for us, but there were no frillsat all. It was very fundamental.”

Unfortunately, there weren’t enough resourceson campus for Stirling himself, when the schoolcouldn’t pay him a salary. He left the NorfolkDivision in 1951 to teach at Norfolk Collegiate.

“We ran out of students and I was low man onthe totem pole. And so Lewis Webb at that timesaid he was very sorry but he couldn’t renew mycontract. . . .he would be very glad to see me again

when he got some more students,” Stirling said.He returned to campus two years later.

The students who came to the campus afterthe war also demonstrated a spurt in maturity,developed during the war eXort.

“In a way they were more serious minded thanthe pre-war students,” said Lewis Webb. “We’vehad good students all along. But these studentsthat came back definitely had a more seriousobjective and it reflected all the way back to a highschool group as well. . . They were both put in thesame classrooms, and the [recently graduated]high school students were suddenly faced with aquicker maturity and producing to stay in pacewith the veterans. The veterans definitely had avery good influence on our academic side of theinstitution.”

After the war, the hands-on skills taughtformerly in the War Training Program wererelocated to the Norfolk Division of William andMary Technical Institute. Led by Lee Klinefelter,who was an instructor in the War Training

16

After the war, the

hands-on skills

that students were

learning at the

War Training

Program were

taught at a new

entity called the

Norfolk Division of

William and Mary

Technical Institute.

Above: Electronics instruction at the technical institute. Opposite: Promotional images for the technical institute in 1948.

“Traditional engineering programs are not meeting the demandsof the individual. Nationwide, the number of freshmen enrolled inengineering decreased from 7,900 in 1957 to 6,800 in 1962,” Lampesaid. “Young people are not challenged by the old, traditionalconcept.”

Lampe said he wanted to create a new breed of “scientist doer,”shaped in part by a specially designed senior-year course consisting oflectures, seminars and special projects on the problems of present-dayAmerican society.

Encouraged by the new building being constructed to house theengineering school, Lampe used his nationally known reputation to hiresmart young faculty members from top engineering schools in theSoutheast. There was an air of optimism around what was being built.

Clearly, the School of Engineering still had a long way to go. Andprecious little in the way of financial resources to help get it there.

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“The objections, of course, came violently from the University ofVirginia and VPI.. . Their argument was at that time [the NorfolkDivision’s] applications for students in engineering were low and theUniversity’s program in engineering was very small, and should havebeen phased out.”

His engineering rivals at the University of Virginia and VPI under-estimated Lewis Webb.

Webb and his supporters from Hampton Roads engineering groupshammered away at the State Council of Higher Education, arguingthat the issue of need for a four-year engineering school should atleast be discussed. Under constant pressure, it agreed to appoint apanel comprised of the state’s two engineering deans and Webb, as arepresentative of the Norfolk Division.

Not liking his odds with that arrangement, Webb convinced theCouncil to invite three experts from out of state to sit on the committee.Deans of engineering schools at North Carolina State, Michigan Stateand Yale heard the Norfolk Division appeal.

Lewis Webb left nothing to chance. He arranged for a U.S. Navyhelicopter to fly the committee members over Hampton Roads, pointingout by air vital industrial cogs such as Langley Field, the NewportNews Shipyard and NASA, all located within a short drive of campus.

The committee met four times, concluding with the out-of-statemembers being convinced. Webb said Dean J. Harold Lampe of NorthCarolina State said to the group, “Why don’t we quit fooling aroundwith this thing and go ahead and admit that there’s need for anengineering school here? It’s quite obvious.”

The final vote was four to two, with all three out-of-state committeemembers voting in favor of establishing a school of engineering at theNorfolk Division. In 1962, the Virginia General Assembly authorizedthe College to oXer a bachelor of science in engineering degree, taughtin Norfolk and awarded in Norfolk. The College’s formal relationshipwith Virginia Polytechnic Institute ended in September 1963.

As a final act, Webb convinced Lampe to delay his retirementplans and relocate to Norfolk, serving as the first dean of engineeringat newly named Old Dominion College.

In a story in Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot newspaper on January 20,1963, the State Council of Higher Education Director William H.McFarlane praised the hire eXusively. “Dr. Lampe is the kind of goodfortune that befalls a college once in 10 years,” he said. “You don’t findmen like that every day.”

Lampe told the newspaper of his intention to build a differenttype of engineering program at Old Dominion College, unlike existingprograms at the University of Virginia and VPI.

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Below: The faculty of the Engineering School of the Norfolk Division of the College ofWilliam and Mary in 1965.

Freshman engineering major DavidBraitsch was the first recipient of theEpes-Fitzgerald Paper Company, Inc.scholarship in 1963.

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Kaufman HallA New Building for an Engineering School

Opposite far left: Kaufman Hall takes shape in 1964.

Opposite: Virginia Governor Albertis S. Harrison Jr.(center) with Norfolk Division President Lewis W. WebbJr. (right) and school benefactor Charles L. Kaufman atthe Dedication of Kaufman Hall.

Above: Kaufman Hall’s iconic sculpture “Free Form” bylocal artist Victor A. Pickett.

Right: When opened in 1965, Kaufman Hall washailed as one of the most modern engineering buildingsin the state.

leveling block after block of sub-standard buildings.”

Harrison told the crowd of civic leaders and Collegeboosters that Old Dominion also had the “pricelessadvantage” of the citizens ofHampton Roads, who saw thepotential of a four-year college inNorfolk, and worked to build it.

One such citizen, had his nameplaced on the outside of the$580,000 building, despitehumbly trying to refuse the honor.

Charles L. Kaufman, an attorneywho came to Norfolk in 1919,was an ardent supporter of thehumanitarian, civic and educa-tional needs of his community.As chairman of the Norfolk Re-development and Housing Authority,he was instrumental in the action ittook to allocate land to the Collegefor the enlargement of its campus.

Governor Harrison paid tribute tothe man for whom the buildingwas named, saying: “Perhapsmore than any other one man,Charles L. Kaufman, a decade agopersuaded the Board of Visitors ofthe College of William and Marythat Old Dominion must become a degree-grantingcollege to fulfill its destiny and its obligation toNorfolk and to all of Tidewater. This Charles L. KaufmanEngineering Building launches a degree-grantingprogram in Engineering.”

In The Virginian-Pilot the next day, reporter JohnMoreau wrote that Kaufman recalled his modest back-

ground – he was from a large family in a small city with nocollege. He had long thought, and hoped, that everyoneshould have a chance at college. “Old Dominion College

has done much to make my dreamscome true that all young menand women get an education,”Kaufman said.

On the second night of buildingdedication, Newman Hall ofWashington, D.C., executive directorof the Commission on EngineeringEducation, and S. E. Liles, presidentof Tidewater Construction Co.,were the featured speakers,articulating their vision for thefuture of engineering in the UnitedStates.

For day three, Saturday, May 1,an open house at Kaufman Hallshowed off the new building toparents, high school teachers,pupils and the public.

With an enrollment of 250, andthe first class set for graduationin June of 1966, Lampe said OldDominion College’s School ofEngineering benefited from strongfull-time faculty, and was poised

to offer a stronger curriculum to its students in thenear future.

“Outstanding engineers engaged in professional workin the area will serve as part-time teachers for some ofthe more specialized courses of an advanced nature,”he said. “These men will bring to the students theirown wealth of experience and knowledge within aparticular specialty.”

After laboring for years to educate its growing studentpopulation in any space that could be found, theengineering school’s own building, Charles L. KaufmanHall, opened in 1965.

Such an occasion merited a grand celebration, and OldDominion College hosted one, spread over three days,April 29 through May 1, 1965.

The opening was treated as thetrue inauguration of engineeringeducation at Old Dominion —at least the visible one — aslaboratories in the new buildingwould offer education in thermo-dynamics, mechanical propertiesand even the brand-new technol-ogy of computers.

The building opening featuredthe dedication of a statue on thefront steps, “Free Form,” by localsculptor Victor A. Pickett. “Mydad loved that statue,” GeorgeWebb recalled.

In his brief, understated remarkson the first night of dedication,Dean J. Harold Lampe said new materials, methodsand frontiers would be dynamic factors in the world ofengineering that lay ahead.

“It is undoubtedly true that engineering graduates of fouror five years hence will be working on and responsible forthe solution of new and complex problems of which wehave little knowledge at this time,” said Lampe.

That’s why Old Dominion’s emphasis on the “fundamentaland basic” laws of a broad cross-section of engineeringwas important, Lampe said.

Virginia Governor Albertis S. Harrison Jr. also spoke onthe first night of dedication. His remarks were anythingbut understated as he declared, “I truly believe the nextcentury in America belongs to the South.”

A lawyer from Southside, Virginia,Harrison had been pivotal inconvincing Virginia’s GeneralAssembly to sever the ties betweenthe College of William and Maryand what would become OldDominion College. Harrisonsaid in his speech that he had“no cause to regret that Bill ofDivorcement!” He said OldDominion College would offer achallenge to any other college oruniversity in the state through itsleadership.

“It has the advantage of beinga downtown college, and acrossour nation the educational tides

are coming in for institutions with urban locations. Iam told that more than half of America’s total collegeenrollment is in institutions of this kind, if not always ofthis caliber,” Harrison said.

“Old Dominion has the advantage of being located inNorfolk, a city in which there is no temporizing with thedemands of progress, and where public support canmake possible the creation of a college campus by

“Old Dominion Collegehas done much to makemy dreams come truethat all young men and

women get aneducation.”

– Charles L. Kaufman

everyone in the country when he came to engineering atthe Norfolk Division. And, of course, the timetable wassuch that he retired at NC State just at the time when weneeded a new dean.”

Lewis Webb’s pitch appealed to theengineer in Lampe – build somethinghere.

Webb said he told Lampe, “Weneeded someone badly to take holdand that we could not attract a verystrong individual such as himselfbecause the School of Engineeringwas not developed, was not accredited,and a great deal of work had to bedone. There was no building to houseit, very meager laboratories wereavailable, and so it would be a job of building itfrom scratch.”

He even used guilt to try to entice Lampe to come.

“I kept after him and pointed out to him that, although at64 or 65, he was very strong, [and] active mentally andphysically, that he couldn’t possibly just retire and donothing; and also that he would waste his talent by justtaking odd jobs and consulting work...I think I reallyshamed him into taking this job.”

Lampe finally agreed to retire from NC State and cometo the school, organizing efforts to graduate its first

class. Though his stay was short, Lewis Webb said heand Lampe used the four years to design an engineeringcurriculum unique in the state.

“He and I worked daily on developing the curriculumwhich would not duplicate VPI’s, whichwould not duplicate University ofVirginia, and be of a different type,”Webb said. “We visited a number ofdifferent engineering schools...I’dsay we visited some 10 or 15 differentschools and looked over their programsand talked to schools in large urbanareas to see just how they were trainingtheir engineers. The results were thetype of program…we developed andwhich I still feel is the effective way toeducate engineers.”

After overseeing the first class of graduates from the OldDominion College School of Engineering, Lampe retired forthe second time in 1966, but Edward White said hecontinued to provide advice and counsel to the engineeringschool that he helped build well into the 1970s.

J. Harold Lampe died in 1986, leaving a legacy hereand at North Carolina State, where four generations ofLampes have made their mark.

Opposie: Harold J. Lampe, the first deanof the School of Engineering, addresses aclass of students.

Right: J. Harold Lampe and WalterHixon Jr. of NASA survey plans for thenew engineering building, to be namedKaufman Hall.

The new school neededa man of stature as itsfirst dean, and there

weren’t many engineersheld in the regard ofJ. Harold Lampe.

Helping a Fledgling Engineering School Take FlightJ. Harold Lampe: The PioneerTruthfully, Old Dominion University should never havebeen able to attract a first engineering school dean thequality of J. Harold Lampe.

When Lampe came to Norfolk in 1962, the newly mintedOld Dominion College was still instructing engineeringstudents in any space on campus that could be found,including Navy surplus tar-paper shacks that DivisionHead Louis Webb had purchased for $100 each. Thenew engineering building, Kaufman Hall, wouldn’t openfor another three years.

Lampe was nearing the end of an esteemed career, havingspent the previous 17 years as dean of engineering atNorth Carolina State. The longest-tenured dean ofengineering in NC State history, Lampe had led manyadvances during his time in Raleigh, developing coursesin furniture manufacturing and other fields that servedNorth Carolina’s industrial needs. NC State built thecountry’s first nuclear reactor on a university campusduring his tenure, and Lampe was an important figure inthe planning for what would become the state’s ResearchTriangle Park.

His family had deep roots in that community: Lampe Drivenear campus is named for him. Lampe and his wife did notwant to relocate, but they were powerless to resist the

persuasive influence of President Lewis W. Webb.

“I…knew that he was within a very short time of retiringfrom NC State. I approached him and first he turned medown cold and said, no, he had no desire to do that andhis wife, of course, objected, too,” Webb told Old DominionArchivist James Sweeney.

However, Webb’s personal rapport with Lampe wouldeventually win the day. He had been one of three deansfrom out-of-state colleges selected to sit on a committeethat would arbitrate the request for a degree-grantingengineering school in Norfolk. After tense meetings, anddespite strenuous objections from the University of Virginiaand Virginia Polytechnic Institute, all three out-of-statedeans had voted to create the new engineering school.

“It’s hard to say exactly what happened, but clearly heand my dad got along really, really well. And he andDean Lampe convinced enough people on the committeethere was a need for an engineering school here,” saidLewis Webb’s son George.

Webb decided the new school needed a man of statureas its first dean, and there weren’t many engineers heldin the regard of J. Harold Lampe. Edward White, who atthe time was acting as dean of engineering studies atthe Norfolk Division, said: “Dean Lampe was known to

CHAPTER 2THE EARLY YEARS

And of course, money was tight. Despite becoming Old DominionUniversity in 1969, a nod to the fact that almost all of its programsnow granted four-year, baccalaureate degrees, and that graduateprograms had been introduced, Old Dominion’s second president,James Bugg, wrestled with near-constant budget pressure for hisyoung institution.

News stories at the time focused on state cutbacks to education,reductions that would only get worse in the first few years of theSchool of Engineering’s history. By 1970, Old Dominion UniversityRector Frank Batten declared that the state government’s drasticcuts to its budget request represented a “true and serious crisisfor ODU.” Then-Governor Linwood Holton, who Batten said was“sympathetic” to Old Dominion’s concerns, still threatened to cut theuniversity’s operating budget funds from $15.6 million to $11.2 million,and its capital outlay requests from $8.1 million to $4.1 million.

Batten noted that the proposed budget would allow Old Dominiononly $709 per student from the state’s general fund, compared with$1,651 per student for the University of Virginia, and $1,384 perstudent for the College of William and Mary. Successive Old Dominionpresidents and University of Virginia Board of Visitors rectors havesince made the argument nonstop for more than 40 years that theschool is still underfunded, compared to other public university peersin the state.

Lampe had retired after the first class of four-year engineeringstudents was graduated from Old Dominion, but before he left, hehired a stable of bright, ambitious, young faculty members, professorswho were undaunted by the University’s lack of resources.

Ash, one of the early hires, said after faculty members got over theinitial shock of arriving at a school that was in such a beginning state,it ended up being an unexpected benefit. “I used to say we do thingsbecause that seems like the best way to do them, as opposed to thatbeing the way we’ve always done them,” he said. “That really doescreate an unusual paradigm.”

When he retired, Lampe was succeeded by Ralph Rotty fromTulane University, who first came to President Lewis Webb’sattention because of his son George.

“He was my department chair at Tulane, and he was so terrific,I told my dad he had to look at him. So he came down to New Orleansand see me and the kids, and met Dr. Rotty,” George Webb said. “Toget somebody with Ralph’s credentials to ODU, which was so newthen, was tricky.” But the persuasive skills of Lewis Webb won the dayagain, and Rotty decamped to Norfolk.

Rotty’s academic credentials were undeniable. But from thebeginning, George Webb said he struggled to fit in with the unique,

Ralph Rotty, the second Dean ofOld Dominion University’s Schoolof Engineering

Below: Construction of KaufmanMall, 1965.

Old Dominion College President Lewis Webb and J. Harold Lampe,the man chosen to be the School of Engineering’s first dean, had laidthe groundwork for engineering to succeed in southeastern Virginia.However, the young, enthusiastic faculty who arrived to teach at thisbrand-new engineering school quickly realized the challenges.

“The idea of coming into a new academic program, a newengineering program, was appealing. But we were truly just beginning,”said Sid Roberts, who was one of several faculty who followed Lampefrom North Carolina State to Old Dominion. He arrived in 1965.

“Many of the buildings that currently exist did not exist then,” saidBill Stanley, who joined the faculty a year later from South Carolina’sClemson University. “I didn’t really think about [the modest state ofthe campus] a great deal. I came from a fairly modest background, soit didn’t seem like that big of a deal.”

Bob Ash arrived in 1967, and the professor and eminent scholar isstill a full-time faculty member. He remembers being taller than thetrees on Kaufman Mall. “It was a brand-new university, basically,”said Ash. “The only engineering building was Kaufman Hall. When Ifirst came here, there was no landscaping to speak of.”

collaborative tradition that was quickly evolving at Old Dominion.Professor Gene Goglia had started a soon-to-be lucrative pipeline tothe NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Otherfaculty members were teaching courses for the U.S. Navy and forNewport News Ship Building and Dry Dock Company, which waslater sold to Northrop Grumman.

“Ralph had one diWculty, which was he really wanted to makeODU an engineering school more like Tulane,” Goglia said. “The taskof sending his faculty all over the place to teach…always made himkind of uncomfortable. I think he would have been better if he hadembraced that kind of model.”

Additionally, Rotty faced an unexpected obstacle in the leaders ofthe research specializations, who had all expected to get the dean’s jobthemselves. “You’re a brand new engineering school, and the way youget good people to come to your engineering school is you tell all thenew department heads that they’re going to become the dean afteryou’re retired. That created some issues early on,” Ash said.

Despite this tension, there existed strong camaraderie among thepeople building the new engineering school. “Things were much morecasual then,” Stanley said. “There were a lot of parties in my firstcouple of years there, and almost every faculty member in theengineering school went to almost every party.”

This small staff was also charged with building a new type of

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Bob Ash

When Bob Ash was completing his engineering studiesat Tulane University in 1967, he looked for jobs acrossthe United States. On his way back from a job interviewin Philadelphia, Ash’s mentor, Ralph Rotty, convincedhim to come for an interview at Old Dominion University,where Rotty was the dean of the School of Engineering.

“He said to me, ‘Why don’t you stay here a couple ofyears, and then go somewhere else?’” Ash recalled. “Isaid, ‘That sounds like a greatidea.’ And here I am.”

Ash, professor and eminent scholarof mechanical and aerospaceengineering, is now, in his 46thyear, the longest-tenured facultymember in the Frank Batten Collegeof Engineering and Technology.Twice he has left, for two years toa job at NASA’s Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena, California,and for another year as a researchfellow at NASA Langley ResearchCenter. Each time, Ash returned tothe only university where he hasever worked.

“I love it here,” he said in a 2012interview. “In fact, I’m doing someof the most exciting research I’vedone in my entire time at Old DominionUniversity. I’m feeling really good aboutwhere I am.”

Right away, Ash felt a kinship with the newengineering school he joined in 1967.

“The neat thing was that people who camehere were really devoted to the programsthey built,” he said. “Also, we did thingsbecause it seemed like the best way to dothem, not because it was the way we hadalways done them. That was the advan-tage being in a new school.”

When Ash started in Norfolk, the school’ssize ended up being an advantage as well.“We were so small – the engineeringschool was entirely in Kaufman Hall – thatyou really got to know faculty across theuniversity,” he said. “We could do things

across disciplines without any trouble, because youknew everybody.”

Ash was also attracted to the type of students whowanted to study here. “We typically don’t attract kidswho get into MIT,” he said. “But this much is still true:we attract kids who are very willing to work, and willingto do whatever you assign them to do.”

He still rides his bicycle to work.But Ash said the campus he ridesto has undergone an incredibletransformation, both academicallyand in terms of campus life.

“We’re a first-rate university, withvirtually all the attributes of a first-rate university,” he remarked. “Wehave faculty who are toe-to-toewith anybody in the world. Wehave a vibrant student environmentnow. I used to ride my bike here onthe weekends and there wouldn’tbe anyone around. Now there’salways something happening here,whether it’s football or theater, orstudents in Kaufman Mall.”

Longest-Tenured Engineering Faculty Member

“I love it here,” Ash saidin a 2012 interview.

“In fact, I’m doing someof the most excitingresearch I’ve done inmy entire time at OldDominion University.I’m feeling really goodabout where I am.”

Above: Professor Gene Goglia(right) was instrumental in creatingthe research partnership with theNASA Langley Research Center.

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engineering school. Part of the agreement thatpermitted the creation of an engineering schoolin Norfolk stipulated that Old Dominion wasn’tallowed to stream its students into traditionalengineering disciplines. “Lewis Webb had to agreethat our program could not be similar, or evenvery competitive, with the existing programs inthe state of Virginia,” Roberts said.

What Webb and Lampe decided was to providea general engineering education for a student’sfirst two years, with students specializing in theirupper-class years, but not into discrete departments.Roberts said it made for a challenging first fewyears, because the faculty had all come frominstitutions where rigid engineering tracks hadexisted for years.

“We were housed there in Kaufman Hall, andwe were plenty busy, trying to put together a newstyle of academic program. Not the conventional,traditional tracks of electrical, mechanical andcivil,” said Roberts, adding: “And that was part ofthe excitement, really. The fact of the matter is,

engineering is pretty much the same curriculumfor the first two years.”

Ash said it also allowed Old Dominion tobranch out in terms of its expertise into diXerentareas: “We had thermal engineering, administrativeengineering, materials engineering. There werethese non-traditional disciplines, which was veryforward-thinking in my opinion. The people whocame really were devoted to the departments thatthey built. That resulted in a really excitingdepartment to be a part of.”

Long-time faculty member Edward White saidthat there was one thing of which Rotty was fullysupportive. “What Dean Rotty had in mind, I’msure, was the fact that our engineers, regardlessof what their specialty may turn out to be – civil,electrical, or mechanical – are going to receivegood fundamental information in regard to across-the-board types of subjects that embrace all of ourengineering,” White told University ArchivistJames Sweeney in 1974.

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Clarence Ray grew up in Norfolk, and had the gradesto go anywhere for school. But he stayed home, in partbecause his dad made him an offerhe couldn’t refuse.

“I would work in the summers andpart-time on the weekend during theschool year. If I paid for the firstsemester, my father would pay for thesecond semester. Tuition was onlyabout $600 then, but it was a lot ofmoney for me,” Ray laughed.

Graduating with a degree from OldDominion in 1970, with a concentrationin civil engineering, Ray has goneonto a more than 40-year careerdesigning and building power plants,for Duke Power in North Carolina for36 years, then the last six for TheShaw Group, Inc., a consulting firmbased in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Ray and his wife, Sandy, were backat Old Dominion for Homecoming

2012, marveling at how much the campus has grown.“There sure is a lot more here than when I left,” he said,

“We had one computer on our wholecampus, in the Kaufman building, andyou’d be there late at night punchingcards, making sure you didn’t getthem out of order.” But even at thattime, Ray said his classmates, mostlylocal students, were serious abouttheir studies. “You could see theschool getting a little better eachyear.”

When he was a student, Ray andclassmate Dennis Fallon – now deanof engineering at The Citadel –founded a student chapter of theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers.Ray said many of his classmates havegone on to do very well in engineeringfields, mostly in the Hampton Roadsarea, but also across the country.

During his Homecoming visit, Raywas excited to see how much the campus has changedsince reinstatement of Old Dominion football, a sportthat had been dropped from 1941 to 2009. It’schanged his office culture, too. “I would hear colleaguestalking about their football team and the big game thatweekend and I always felt like I was missing out,” Raysaid. “But the guys I work with sure know about ODUfootball now.”

A 40-Year Career Designing Power Plants

Above: Officers of the first national society to be organizedon campus, the student chapter of the American Societyof Civil Engineers.

Right: Clarence Ray and his wife, Sandy, returned to theODU campus for Homecoming in October 2012. Whilea student at ODU, Ray co-founded a campus chapter ofthe American Society of Civil Engineers.

“We had onecomputer on ourwhole campus, inthe Kaufman

building, and you’dbe there late at nightpunching cards,making sure youdidn’t get them out

of order.”

Below: Electronics instruction at the Technical Institute.

Clarence Ray

From HVAC to High Tech

Its history as part of higher education in Norfolk isproud and vital. But without a key partnership with theSchool of Engineering at Old Dominion University, theTechnical Institute might have disappeared altogether.

Instead, its rich story has combined with that of theFrank Batten College of Engineering and Technology,creating the joint history that helps Old Dominionconduct engineering technology education better thanthat offered at just about any school in the country.

While still part of the Norfolk Division of the College ofWilliam and Mary, the Technical Institute existed

completely separately, academically. It had its own studentrecords and its own humanities faculty. The technicalskills taught to students, such as refrigeration and airconditioning, radio and television electronics, andautomotive mechanics, grew out of the war-trainingprograms offered on campus in the Second World War.Its first classrooms were located under the bleachers ofForeman Field.

The Technical Institute was formally established in 1945,and by 1962, had grown to offer three-year, associate-degree programs in three different disciplines. WhileNorfolk Division President Lewis Webb was still trying toconvince the state to grant a new engineering school toNorfolk, the Technical Institute moved across the streetfrom its humble beginnings and into a building onHampton Boulevard in 1959, the shell of which is nowoccupied by ODU’s College of Health Sciences.

The Ledger-Dispatch and Star, a former Norfolk newspaper,reported that the Technical Institute’s new facility“promises to be a prime example of a school specificallydesigned for its function. Faculty members, expecting thebuilding to be ready for Christmas, believe it to be thefinest technical school in the vicinity, tailor-made to turnout technicians in specialized areas.”

Edgar Kovner, who became director of the TechnicalInstitute in 1959, remembered the tension that existedbetween the three-year associate-degree faculty and thefaculty of the College as a whole. He told UniversityArchivist James Sweeney in 1974, “They were notaccepted. They were looked upon as a thing thatshouldn’t be there. As a matter of fact when the collegeeventually went up for four-year accreditation in 1961,they specifically excluded the technical program.”

Top left: Faculty of the Technical Institute.

Bottom left: Electronics instruction at the Technical Institute.

Opposite left: Gary Crossman taught at the TechnicalInstitute, then for more than 30 years in the College ofEngineering.

Opposite right: Bill Stanley, professor of electricalengineering, who became chair of the engineeringtechnology program.

Throughout the 1960s, attendance at the Technical Institutesagged. The rise of the community college system meantthat aspiring television repairmen or air conditioningtechnologists could get an associate degree in two years– at a far lower price – than the three-year program offeredby Old Dominion. Despite being the only institute of itskind in the state recognized by the accreditationorganization that would become the AccreditationBoard for Engineering and Technology, the TechnicalInstitute saw its enrollment dwindle to only 60 students.

When the specter of closing the Technical Institute wasraised, the School of Engineering’s second dean, RalphRotty, decided to do something bold. He had beenfollowing the creation of four-year engineering technologydegree programs at a few universities across the U.S.,and he decided to roll the Technical Institute into theSchool of Engineering. Up to that point, engineeringtechnology degrees were much like associate degrees.After the merger, Old Dominion ended up with the firstuniversity-level engineering technology program in thestate, and one of the first in the country.

“I think Ralph Rotty, who was very clever, started studyingthese four-year programs, and decided [that anengineering technology program] might work,” said BillStanley, then a young professor in electrical engineering.“And for whatever reason, he picked me to run it. In thefall of 1970, I moved my office across Hampton Boulevardto the old Technical Institute to become chair.”

It turns out that Kovner had been in on the plan. Figuringhis own dictatorial style wouldn’t work well with the newpartnership, Kovner had declined the offer to be chair.“So [President James Bugg] suggested Dr. Stanley,”Kovner told Sweeney.

“He seemed like an ideal person, he also had a doctorate,which I didn’t,” Kovner explained. “He had some cloutwith the president to keep the program going, plus hehad respectability in any field. Rotty sent him over and itwas my job to con him or hoodwink him in any way Icould to see him take the job. I’m happy to say I wasable to fool him. He took the job, not knowing what he

was getting into and he has proved to be a gem.”

Within the first year under Stanley’s leadership, the newdepartment became the first in the state to offer a four-year degree in engineering technology. And its enrollmentincreased five-fold in the first four years, “the largestenrollment increase in any department of the University,”Stanley said.

Stanley had a foot in each camp, teaching in bothengineering technology and electrical engineering forthe first few years. He helped navigate the adjustmentperiod between the two sides.

“There’s always been some...friendly competition,”Stanley said. “The worst I could say is engineeringfaculty thought we [didn’t] need technology programs.Engineering faculty members have a certain level theythink at, and that you’re going to learn practicalapplications after you get out of college. The fact is,many of the things that are done in engineering havea hands-on focus.”

Despite complaints from some traditional engineers,early support of engineering technology education waskey to its growth at Old Dominion. In the 1970s, OldDominion had three engineering programs and threeengineering technology programs.

Gary Crossman, the last engineering faculty memberwho actually taught classes at the Technical Institute,said that early investment has paid huge dividends forOld Dominion. In terms of the number of engineeringtechnology graduates, Old Dominion is in the top ten inthe country.

“While I was here, I was on the accreditation board forengineering technology. I was an evaluator, and I visitedprobably 25 different schools. I saw technology programs,and I didn’t see any better than ours, in all honesty,”Crossman said. “We’re probably in the top three in thecountry in terms of engineering technology, but there’sno real measuring stick. We would like there to be ameasuring stick.”

Technical Institute

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“This type of modern education has been well received by industry.They’re fascinated by it; they like it and they tell us so. And so ourengineers have done well wherever they go. We’ve sent them to allkinds of graduate schools and industry writes back and tells us whata good job our students are doing, and they come back for moreengineers, which makes us very happy.”

Rotty was also pivotal in developing the degree program inengineering technology. Old Dominion University was the first schoolin the state – and one of the first in the country – to oXer a four-yeardegree in engineering technology. Bill Stanley, who was dispatched tobecome department chair of engineering technology when the Schoolof Engineering absorbed the Technical Institute in 1970, said it tookRotty being very persistent with President James Bugg that OldDominion apply to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginiato start the program.

“The president wanted to wait another year. But Ralph Rotty wasgoing to push the idea,” Stanley said. “I remember one Saturday.. .weinterrupted a football game [Bugg] was watching. Rotty was insistent.President Bugg met the three of us in the administrative building, andhe was mad. ‘How can you justify this?’ he kept saying.”

Stanley said Rotty had heard that Virginia Polytechnic Institutewas planning to apply to create its own engineering technology programthe following year. Rotty figured that VPI would be chosen above OldDominion, so the school needed to get its application in a year earlier.President Bugg finally relented. “Within two years, we had the highestpercentage increase in enrollment in any department on campus,”said Stanley. “We had the highest enrollment in the state; we startedto get the word out to other states. Within a couple of years, we weregetting students from all over.”

This unconventional approach to engineering instruction, andthe enthusiasm with which faculty pursued teaching and researchpartnerships with local industry, meant that the School of Engineeringgrew faster in its first decade than any other school on campus. In1971, the Engineering Laboratory Building was opened, eventuallynamed Duckworth Hall, for former Norfolk Mayor Fred Duckworth,a long-time champion of the university. The next year, Old DominionUniversity’s first doctorate program by the School of Engineering wasintroduced.

Dean Rotty moved on from Old Dominion in 1973, following ayear’s leave of absence as a senior post-doctoral research associateof the Air Resources Laboratory within the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Rotty’s successor, John Weese, arrived in 1974 from the Universityof Denver and immediately realized the scope of the funding problem.Reductions in state funding, combined with an overall sag in the

34

Thomas Sterling

Students at the School of Informatics and Computing atIndiana University Bloomington are fortunate to receiveinstruction from Thomas Sterling, whose pioneeringresearch in community/Linux cluster computing led tohis receiving the Gordon Bell Prize in 1997.

Forty years ago, Sterling was an anxious undergraduatestudent in engineering at Old DominionUniversity, having discovered theschool while stationed at Naval AirStation Oceana in Virginia Beach.

“I remember when I first becameaware of it; I saw an ODU bumpersticker on a car in a parking lot at theNavy base at which I was stationed,”Sterling said. “I found a map – therewas no Web, Internet, laptops – figuredout where ODU was and drove the 25miles from Virginia Beach to HamptonBoulevard.”

Sterling enrolled in some nightclasses, and found them rewardingand challenging. So he adjusted his schedule to work onfighters on the graveyard shift while he attended OldDominion full time, starting in 1972.

He remembers a school where things were in the processof getting built, perpetually. “The setup was modest butit provided opportunity, too,” he said. “I remember thefaculty as being competent and considerate. I always feltwelcome. The courses were of quality and I rememberworking hard to get through them, although I didpretty well.”

Sterling also somehow found time to get involved instudent organizations, leading the student electricalengineering organization and publishing the studentengineering bulletin, writing editorials under the penname “Tron.” Sterling was conferred with it in the Navybecause of his enthusiasm for solving debugging problemswith military technology. His enthusiasm for tackling hisschool problems led to his engineering research laboratoryat Old Dominion being dubbed “TRON-sylvania.”

“ODU was really my life during those years. [It] gaveme direction, accomplishment, and the education step-upthat was enough such that the momentum has neverbeen quenched,” Sterling said.

After graduating with a degree in electrical engineeringin 1974, Sterling went on to do graduate work at MIT,

earning his doctorate in 1984. His professional careerhas been filled with accomplishment, from earning aHertz Fellowship while at MIT, to a distinguished 14-yearcareer at NASA, to the 30 years of groundbreaking workin parallel computing that led Sterling to be known asthe “father of Beowulf.”

The co-author of six books and theowner of six patents, Sterling iscurrently associate director of IndianaUniversity’s Center for Research inExtreme Scale Technologies.

In the 1970s, Old Dominion mightnot have had the academic pedigreeof schools like Indiana or MIT, butSterling considers the University to bethe launching pad of his whole career.

“Perhaps it was not the most difficultcurriculum in academia, but it was achallenge to me, and I came awaywith a sound engineering educationthat has served me well to this day,”

he said. “I feel very lucky that I was able to go thereunder such difficult circumstances. I cannot imagine howI would have succeeded without that opportunity.”

And Sterling’s nickname from his time at Old Dominionhas followed him through the years. His e-mail addressat Indiana University starts with four characters: T-R-O-N.

“The Father of Beowolf”

His enthusiasm fortackling his schoolproblems led to hisengineering research

laboratory atOld Dominionbeing dubbed

“TRON-sylvania.”

Top: Bill Stanley.

Bottom: School of Engineering DeanJohn A. Weese.

35

The School of Engineering was growing steadily through the 1970s,but one trend was vexing to administrators. The minuscule percentageof female students had not grown; if anything, it had shrunk. InApril 1975, the School of Engineering sponsored its first “Womenin Engineering” conference, designed to inform female high schoolstudents of opportunities in engineering.

The following year, the question “Do women have a place inengineering?” was addressed by a panel at the University’s secondWomen in Engineering Conference. With women numbering only 27of the 480 students in Old Dominion’s School of Engineering, theconference was held to “try to make female students aware of theopportunities in engineering,” Assistant Dean Kenneth H. Murraytold a reporter from the Old Dominion publication UNews.

More than 20 years later, Old Dominion University’s College ofEngineering would take further steps to strongly encourage women tochoose engineering as a possible career. In 2000, responding to aNational Science Foundation report that women were underrepresentedin science and engineering, the College would begin a new initiativeaimed at the education, recruitment and retention of female studentsfrom elementary school through college, called “Womengineers.”

“In order for our country to have the quantity and quality ofengineers that will be required to maintain our competitiveness in theglobal marketplace, it is imperative that we reach out to groups thattraditionally have been underrepresented in engineering,” Bill Swart,dean of the college, said when the initiative was launched.

Early in the 21st century, two other initiatives would be launchedby the College, an ODU chapter of the Society of Women Engineers,

37

economy from the OPEC fuel crisis and the lingering Vietnam Warhad caused enrollment to decline precipitously. Old Dominion had 168students majoring in engineering in the fall of 1974, along with another188 majoring in engineering technology. “Conditions were pretty dire,”Weese said.

To remedy that, the School of Engineering attempted to marketitself a little better, especially locally.

In February 1972, the school held its first Engineering Open House.The doors of Kaufman Hall and what would become Duckworth Hallwere opened to teachers, schoolchildren and the community, andstudents demonstrated projects such as the concrete canoe and theegg drop.

Weese saw the Engineering Open House as a way to entice localparents and teachers, who had heard little about the commutercampus in their city, to consider Old Dominion. The annual EngineeringOpen House has continued for more than 40 years.

The eXort went further. Weese personally reached out to guidancecounselors at high schools in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News andHampton, and traveled with Old Dominion University’s director ofadmissions to recruit future students to Old Dominion’s local, aXordableoption for an engineering education.

Many of the students who did choose Old Dominion, however,were different from the students that Stanley had encountered atNC State. “Here in Norfolk, we had to get used to the idea that thestudents came to us and were part-time students, and [they were]older. That was a benefit, however. By the time people came to us, theyhad some life experiences, and they wanted to focus on engineering.”

36

In the 1970s, Old Dominion Universitybegan hosting Women in Engineeringconferences.

Top: Local students attend ODU’sEngineering Open House.

Bottom: Gregory Selby, professor ofelectrical engineering, speaks withan aspiring engineer.

Right: A concrete canoe beingreadied for competition.

and the Engineering Early Advantage Program(EEAP). Sponsored by the Virginia Space GrantConsortium and administered by ODU’s CareerManagement Center, the EEAPnow introduces admitted femaleengineering freshmen to theCollege, and engineering asa career.

As it grew graduallythrough the 1970s, the schoolwas under pressure from withinto conform to educational norms.Faculty members, whosecolleagues at other universitiesbelonged to formal departmentsin their discipline, grew louderin their concerns that OldDominion’s lack of a depart-mental structure for engineeringmade it more diWcult whendealing with other agencies.

Weese gave formal namesto six departments: electricalengineering, civil engineering,mechanical engineering andmechanics, as well as civilengineering technology,electrical engineering technologyand mechanical engineeringtechnology.

A cooperative educationprogram was established intandem with Old Dominion’sSchool of Business Adminis-tration, making it possible forengineering or engineeringtechnology undergraduates to take prerequisitesfor an MBA program while doing their engineeringstudies, thereby clearing the way for quickercompletion of an MBA degree after graduation.

But make no mistake – this was still anexceedingly modest operation. Everyone who cameto the school from a more established institutionhas his own stories.

“It was a mess, campus then,” said Bill Drewry,

who came as professor and chair of civil engineeringin 1976 from the University of Tennessee. “Therewas a major rework on the mall, and I remember

looking across on a hot day inAugust and there were about12 inches of dust all over thatmall. I thought, ‘My God, whatdid I get into?’”

Part of the problem was,as a school with very littleengineering history, the donorbase of successful graduateswas exceedingly small. Withoutdonors writing checks, and in atime of state budget cuts, theresult was a school with booksstacked all over its “rinky-dink” university bookstore,Drewry said.

The fact that there was noproper, well-stocked campusbookstore suggested that theschool was flying by the seat ofits pants. A long-time facultymember took it upon himself totry to remedy that problem.

In 1978, Edgar Kovner,former director of the TechnicalInstitute and then-chairman ofthe Department of MechanicalEngineering Technology, andhis wife, Kathleen, offered tomatch up to $75,000 incontributions to establish anendowed scholarship fund of$150,000.

The money, which could support as many at 20scholarships a year, was to aid students in all sixdepartments of the engineering school, putting OldDominion on the register of institutions providinglarge scholarships to “attract the cream of the crop,”Kovner told the UNews. An employee since 1943 ofwhat would become Old Dominion University,Kovner said the endowment, “established with thehelp of many hard-working people, will give someof our students the hand they need.”

In October 1981, a

group of Old Dominion

researchers led by

G. Marshall Molen,

associate professor of

electrical engineering,

received a $613,079

grant from the U.S.

Navy to investigate

the passage of large

amounts of current

through an electrical

switch. It was one of

the largest non-NASA

grants ever received

by the School of

Engineering, and

helped spark a fruitful

research relationship.

When John Weese came from the University of Denver in1974 to take over as the third dean of Old DominionUniversity’s School of Engineering, he knew the challengeshe faced.

In an environment of decreasing support for highereducation, enrollment in Old Dominion’s traditionalengineering programs had dipped to fewer than 200students. Five faculty members had been denied tenurebecause the school simply couldn’t afford to make thelong-term financial commitment to them.

It was clear that the state’s other two engineeringschools, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech,were not eager to see Old Dominion grow. “They were notreally anxious for Old Dominion’s School of Engineeringto be successful. Conditions were not ideal for ODU’sengineering school at that point,” Weese said.

But the new Hampton Roads resident took a look aroundthe region and saw the need for engineers at the region’sshipyards, at Norfolk Southern and for the U.S. Navy.“We had a lot of things with which relationships werepossible,” Weese said. So he set about trying to buildthem.

A relationship with NASA Langley was already flourishingwhen Weese arrived, so he helped cultivate cooperativeengineering education programs with other institutionsand businesses.

Relationship-building was done in the other directionas well. An annual Engineering Open House wasimplemented, to interest local high school students inattending engineering school at Old Dominion. “It wasa program to increase our outreach to all schools in theregion,” Weese said. “We also reached out to all thecommunity colleges with which we had any connectionwhatsoever.”

Weese encouraged faculty to join or even create regionalchapters of national engineering societies, taking a turnhimself as president of the Engineers Club of HamptonRoads in 1980-’81.

Those professional associations with engineers from otherschools helped Old Dominion break out of the perceptionthat its education wasn’t valued by peers, Weese said.“You begin to find that there are all kinds of things on

which you and engineers from other schools can worktogether.”

Weese left Norfolk in 1983 for a job in Maryland withthe National Science Foundation. When he left OldDominion, he wrote a two-page progress statement aboutwhere the school had come in his nine years in Norfolk.

He highlighted the growth in enrollment and faculty, andthe large amount of funded research generated by theSchool of Engineering, a figure equaling more than two-thirds of the entire amount received by Old Dominion.“The faculty of the engineering departments conductsmost of the University’s funded research,” Weese wrote.

Weese also wrote about the strength of the partnershipsthat had been developed in the previous decade withNASA Langley, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, theGeneral Electric Television Plant and others: “Theseinteractions have produced or enhanced opportunitiesfor graduates...professional contacts for faculty,scholarships, and general support for the School and theUniversity.”

Almost 30 years after leaving, Weese has warm feelingsabout his time at Old Dominion. He continues hisrelationship with the school by serving on the ODUEngineering advisory board.

“The years I spent at ODU, the years I spent in VirginiaBeach, were immensely rewarding. Our daughters grewup there,” Weese said. “It was a fine experience, and[wife] Betty and I look back fondly.”

John Weese: The AmbassadorGrowing the School of EngineeringOne Community Contact at a Time

The early growth of the School of Engineering at OldDominion College, and then Old Dominion University,owed a debt to geography.

Lewis Webb recognized this, and used it to his advantageduring the campaign to have Old Dominion namedVirginia’s third engineering school. While serving as thefirst president of Old Dominion College, he arranged fora Navy helicopter to fly the state-appointed decision-makers around Hampton Roads, making sure to pointout that the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis-tration operation at Langley Air Force Base was only 22miles away.

The engineers at NASA Langley were well aware of thefoundation of an engineering school in their back yard.With the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the SovietUnion in 1957, the United States government wasengaged in a space race with the Soviets, and neededexpertise.

The late Gene Goglia, then-chair of Old Dominion’sthermal engineering department, struck up a friendshipwith John Duberg, associate director of the NASA LangleyResearch Center.

“John Duberg kind of took ODU under his wing,” saidBob Ash, who arrived as a mechanical engineeringprofessor on campus in 1967. “And as deputy director,he was in a position to have a strategic vision of whereNASA was trying to go. And they needed a strong localengineering school. By and large, what happened wasDuberg encouraged people like Gene Goglia to comeover there and kick the hubcaps.”

On April 16, 1968, The Virginian-Pilot newspaper reportedthat Goglia had received a grant of $213,800 “toconduct two research institutes” at NASA’s LangleyResearch Center that summer. Goglia was to co-direct10-week research institutes, attracting 52 researchfellows from across the country. The following year, theprogram expanded, and the grant for Old DominionCollege grew to $256,000.

The summer research institutes still exist at NASA Langley,and they were the first tangible example of a mutuallybeneficial partnership that has lasted for almost 50 years.

Besides proximity to the strategic space resource, OldDominion’s engineering school had a few other thingsgoing for it in cultivating its relationship with NASA.One was Goglia, who had followed Dean J. HaroldLampe (formerly of North Carolina State), to Norfolk.Prior to moving south, Goglia had worked many yearsat the University of Maine.

Ash said Goglia wouldn’t have been tenured at a classicresearch institution like the University of Michigan or Cornell,“But he was a really solid teacher of thermodynamics.”Because of the way Old Dominion’s engineering programwas structured, every student needed to take thermodynamicsas part of the first two years of basic engineering education.

(Continued on the following page)

Other changes were occurring on campus,which would pay many dividends. An ArmyReserve OWcers’ Training Corps program startedat the university in fall 1969, attracting 131 students.These soon-to-be Army officers would becomesome of the best students in Old Dominion’sengineering classes in future years.

In fall of 1982, the Hampton Roads NavalROTC joined the Army ROTC on campus, a jointeXort that also involved Norfolk State Universityand Hampton Institute. Under the command ofCaptain Harold J. Sutphen, the program numberedan initial 70 students. “[We] intend for the unit tobe active in community and university affairs,”Sutphen told a reporter from The Courier, OldDominion University’s faculty and staX newspaper.“We’re looking forward to being active participantsin the life of the university.”

The School of Engineering had already startedto form strong research partnerships with NavalStation Norfolk. In October 1981, a group of OldDominion researchers led by G. Marshall Molen,associate professor of electrical engineering,received a $613,079 grant from the U.S. Navy toinvestigate the passage of large amounts ofcurrent through an electrical switch. It was one of

the largest non-NASA grants ever received by theSchool of Engineering, and helped spark a fruitfulresearch relationship.

Weese stepped down in July 1983 to becomedirector of the mechanical engineering andmechanics division of the National ScienceFoundation. In a letter about the School ofEngineering in 1983, Weese highlighted thegrowth in enrollment, faculty and funded research.He also wrote at length about the partnershipsthat Old Dominion was attempting to form withlocal industry, military and government bodies.

Weese wrote that Old Dominion University washelping fulfill its mandate as an urban universitythrough collaborative relationships. Theserelationships provided opportunities with nearbyinstitutions, and in turn provided opportunitiesfor Old Dominion’s growing cohort of engineeringgraduates.

After more than two decades of granting four-year engineering degrees, the School of Engineeringwas looking for another dean. It was also about toundergo a number of major changes, because ofthe man who ended up accepting the position.

40

Left: Engineering TechnologyProfessor Edgar Kovner and hiswife, Kathleen, established a$150,000 endowed scholarshipfund that has funded the educationof hundreds of ODU students in thepast 30 years.

Right: Mechanical Engineering Professor Samir Ibrahim,who helped develop an accurate and economicalmethod for vibration testing on the first Space Shuttle.

41

NASA: A Fruitful PartnershipProximity Integral to Growth

As well, Goglia recruited graduate students from NASAto come to Old Dominion. “We were doing the requiredcourse in thermal engineering, which helped. But ifNASA said ‘We need somebody who knows about sonicfatigue,’ Gene would always say: ‘We have someonelike that.’ He was very, very successful,” Ash said.

The partnership led to a generation of bright studentsbeing turned on to the concepts vital to space flight.More ODU graduates are employed inengineering at NASA Langley than fromany other university in the country.

Eventually, the success of Old Dominionbrought competitors. George WashingtonUniversity began a graduate programin aerospace engineering, bringing114 students to the campus of theNASA Langley Research Center in fall1968. Old Dominion joined with otherVirginia Universities in forming theVirginia Associated Research Campus(VARC) in Hampton, a graduate program inengineering that would provide skilled professionals notonly to NASA, but to the Army researchcenter at Fort Eustis and to NewportNews Ship Building and Dry Dock.

Sid Roberts, who took over as assistantdean in charge of graduate engineeringprograms at VARC in 1971, said OldDominion was dismayed that GeorgeWashington University was able to createa center on the NASA Langley campus.“But we did come up with the idea ofplacing ourselves close enough to themthat we could teach their engineers whowere interested in graduate programs,”Roberts said.

“At the peak period in the 1970s, wewere probably teaching as many as 20graduate courses a semester. Thatcaused us to get busy, and we promisedthem that we would provide that graduate resource, aslong as we continued to get the students.”

Roberts oversaw the creation of a Ph.D. program inengineering, with specialization in aeronautics, whichhelped attract even more bright young researchers,including mechanical engineering professor SurendraTiwari.

“He would have been a distinguished professor at anyuniversity in the United States,” Ash said. “He was

unbelievable. Surendra was a person who covered thereally tough part of high-speed flight and aerodynamics.Suddenly ODU had a world-class guy in this area.”Tiwari was another protégé of Goglia, who had taughthim at Maine.

Ash himself started doing work in the InstrumentResearch Division of NASA, getting dozens of his own

projects funded by NASA. “Gene Goglia wouldcultivate, for us, these opportunities to build a

research relationship with senior researchersat NASA Langley,” said Ash, now aprofessor and eminent scholar. “I canwithout reservations say I owe mycareer to that relationship.”

The partnership only grew. By 1984,more than 40 percent of the university’s$5.5 million in research grants andsponsored programs was coming from

the NASA Langley Research Center.Mechanical Engineering Professor Samir

Ibrahim helped develop an accurate andeconomical method for vibration testing on the first

Space Shuttle. A senior design project bystudents Nhu Vinh and Ravi Kurumety– to test the consequences of a heatedspace probe landing on a very coldplanet – was tested on the Space Shuttlea year later.

The relationship between NASA andOld Dominion helped add to theUniversity’s faculty as well. Oktay Baysalcame from Louisiana State University in1982, founding ODU’s ComputationalFluid Dynamics lab. Duc Nguyen camefrom Northeastern University to work onthe summer program at NASA Langley,and encountered the engineering programat Old Dominion. He’s been a facultymember in Norfolk since 1985, doingresearch in parallel computing. “Eighty-five

to 90 percent of my funded projects have come fromNASA Langley,” Nguyen said. Colin Britcher, professorand associate chair of the mechanical and aerospaceengineering department, came from England toNASA Langley Research Center, and ended up on theOld Dominion faculty.

After the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, andfollowing a corresponding cut in funding nationwide forNASA research, securing grants became more difficult.But that has only led Old Dominion University in the

NASA: A Fruitful Partnership

Left: Gene Goglia

Right: Sid Roberts

Below: Professor StephenBarna (left) conducts anexperiment with an OldDominion University student

two decades since to become more innovative in itspartnerships. Old Dominion took over operations of theaging spaceport on Wallops Island on Virginia’s EasternShore, an initiative that has ultimately led to the state-runVirginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.

NASA had been doing research into aviation on the sitein Hampton since 1930, and the Batten College ofEngineering and Technology even inherited a decade’sworth of operation of the historic Langley Full-Scale WindTunnel, a historic facility on NASA Langley property.

Old Dominion University’s stature as a research partnerin the aerospace industry was so prominent that the2004 book “Aerospace Engineering Education Duringthe First Century of Flight” included a chapter on OldDominion’s aerospace efforts.

“There was a concentration of resources, faculty positionsand laboratories, in several aerospace sub-disciplines,that...served the perceived opportunities and researchneeds of the Langley Research Center and the regionalindustrial base,” the book said.

4342

More ODUgraduates areemployed inengineering atNASA Langleythan from anyother universityin the country.

CHAPTER 3THE COLLEGE GROWS UP

4746

Bill Drewry (left) arrived at OldDominion in 1976 from theUniversity of Tennessee.

The first problem was to settle, once and for all, a battle that hadsimmered at Old Dominion University for years.

After the Second World War, a Technical Institute was created atthe Norfolk Division of William and Mary, oXering three-year associatedegrees in engineering technology, hands-on courses like heating andcooling systems, and television repair.

Under Dean Ralph Rotty, the Technical Institute was rolled intothe School of Engineering, and ODU began offering four-yearengineering technology degrees, the first school in the state to do so.The two faculty groups, despite peace-keeping eXorts by Rotty andthen Weese, remained distrustful of each other.

“There was a virtual fistfight between the groups,” Cross said.“Engineering wanted to eliminate engineering technology, andtechnology was very resentful of their attitude.” The solution? Crosschanged the name of the School of Engineering to the College ofEngineering and Technology. “It was not favored by many!” he saidwith a laugh.

But the hands-on skills that engineering technology oXered werean ideal fit for the community in which Old Dominion was situated.The engineering technology faculty were used as the lead workers inthe Engineering Clinic, an operation created in late 1984 to match uplocal businesses that had engineering problems with the expertisethat existed at Old Dominion.

College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M University, has little incommon with Norfolk. Ernest James (Jim) Cross realized this almostimmediately after arriving from that school in 1984 as the fourth deanof Old Dominion University’s College of Engineering.

Yet the new boss was puzzled as to why Old Dominion was tryingto fashion itself in the mold of Texas A&M, a traditional land-grantuniversity where the campus is a village unto itself. That wasn’t OldDominion, a new university in the middle of a large urban area.

“I guess the thing that struck me initially was here we are in anurban situation, totally different than these land-grant schools.Totally diXerent than William and Mary, totally diXerent than VirginiaTech,” Cross said. “It seemed to me that in the past, the Universitywas attempting to emulate William and Mary, and in the case ofengineering, Virginia Tech, which made no sense to me. So I set abouttrying to change that whole situation.”

In the next dozen years, the now-College of Engineering andTechnology at Old Dominion University would transform its entireapproach, and that shift in emphasis is prevalent in the College today.

Some of that work had already begun. Mechanical and aerospaceengineers were into their second decade of a fruitful partnership withNASA Langley. Cross’s predecessor, John Weese, had made a point ofseeking out collaborative opportunities with other companies andgovernment agencies that needed engineers.

Those steps became flying leaps into areas that, on the surface,seemed an odd fit for an urban engineering college.

Bill Drewry, chair of the civil engineering department, told Weesewhen he was hired in 1976 what needed to happen at Old DominionUniversity: “When I got here, the very last thing from Weese wassomething like, ‘Bill, what do you think of the place?’” Drewryrecalled. “And my answer was very close to this: ‘John, you really don’twant to know what I think of this place. But I’ll be glad to tell youabout what I think the possibilities are for the future.’”

Drewry said he told Weese the school had tremendous potential,because of the market in which Old Dominion University was situated.Practically none of that potential had been tapped.

“That really began to happen under the leadership of Jim Cross.The guy was phenomenal,” Drewry said. “Cross’s philosophy, which Iloved, was ‘in times of adversity, you look at that as an opportunityto do new things.’ That’s what engineers do. Problems? We solveproblems.”

“The plan was for it to emulate a medicalclinic,” Cross said. “It would provide the faculty anopportunity to do engineering things, and it wouldprovide services to the community in terms ofsolutions to engineering problems.”

Gary Crossman, an engineering technologyfaculty member, was appointed as the first directorof the Engineering Clinic. “The idea was that itwould be an entity here that could communicatewith industry and help solve engineering problemsby using faculty expertise,” Crossman said.

A $200,000 grant from Virginia’s Center forInnovative Technology oXered matching funds forindustry that used the expertise of the EngineeringClinic. That was the start. Almost 30 years later,the Engineering Clinic has evolved into the ODUBusiness Gateway, a university-wide initiative thatserves as a one-stop shop for companies and non-for-profit or for military organizations seeking arange of problem-solving services.

“Who would have ever thought that we wouldhave gotten to where we are now?” Crossman said.

Veteran faculty members still at Old DominionUniversity share a similar view of the EngineeringCollege they arrived to join. They all could feel theschool going places, but those places seemed to bea ways oX, and progress was slow.

“My first thought was that they didn’t spend alot of money landscaping. I used to joke that thelandscaping back then was just allowing thedifferent colored broken glass to lie along thesidewalks,” said Gary Schafran, now professor andchair of the civil and environmental engineeringdepartment.

“First of all, campus was very diXerent. Wedidn’t have all of the buildings we have now,” saidOsman Akan, present-day associate dean. “Thestudent body was also diXerent. It was basicallya university for commuters, there was almost nocampus community. As far as academics wasconcerned, we were pretty much a teachingcollege.”

Drewry, who retired in 2009, said the Universitywas growing up, “but people wanted to grow up at

Jim Cross is still engineering, and still doing it on his terms.

In fact he’s happily losing money in the car restorationbusiness, Crossmen Industries, a company he startedafter retiring from Old Dominion University in 2008.

“I restore old sports cars. I thought it would work as abusiness but it has not. But it allows me to pretend I havea business I can go to during theday, so I can get out of the houseand come down here and dowhatever the hell I please,” Crosssaid with a laugh.

Some might argue that was howhe operated when he was dean ofthe College of Engineering andTechnology.

Cross arrived in Norfolk August 1,1984, brought to the region inpart to be closer to aging parents.“But I did see opportunities here,” he said. “However,when I first walked into the place I thought, ‘Oh my God,what have I done?’ There was no money. There was noenthusiasm for hardly anything.”

In his brash style, Cross threw his enthusiasm behindmany innovative projects. The engineering technologyprogram was a unique asset, so Cross spearheaded the

idea of an Engineering Clinic, to solve engineeringproblems for local industries. Almost 30 years later, that

center has grown and evolved into the ODU BusinessGateway, a dynamic entity that provides links to OldDominion faculty and spurs regional economic growth.

Under Cross, Old Dominion’s Engineering Collegeopened a graduate center on thepeninsula. The school began itsforay into modeling and simulation,which has become a spectacularsuccess. Old Dominion engineerseven took over operation of theMid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport,a bold initiative that has helpedthe institute at Wallops Island onVirginia’s Eastern Shore become aviable national facility.

To undertake these steps, Crosssaid he had to get Old Dominion to stop thinking thatit was Virginia Tech or Texas A&M. Not in terms ofaccomplishment, rather in terms of being an urbaninstitution. Cross believed that Old Dominion needed toconcentrate on entirely different things.

The three parts of a university’s responsibility are teaching,research and service, Cross explained, adding: “I chose tofind ways to emphasize the service concept, and contributein some ways to the urban economic development.”

“The university can, and should, be a major contributorto the economic development of the urban region, andnot try to emulate the large, land-grant schools,” he said.

And yes, Cross ruffled a few feathers along the way,from members of his faculty all the way up to then-OldDominion University President Jim Koch. “He fired me atleast once,” said Cross, “but we had a great workingrelationship.” Not everything that was tried in thoseyears was a success. But at the end of his tenure asdean, it was clear that the College of Engineering andTechnology had made major strides.

“I had a whole lot of fun,” Cross said. “When I camehere, I thought it was a terrible mistake. But the moreI got into it, the more I thought, ‘We’ve really gotsomething here.’ I don’t think we’re done growing at all.”

Taking Chances Brilliantly, Boldly and Brashly

“The university can, andshould, be a major

contributor to the economicdevelopment of the urbanregion, and not try toemulate the large, land

grant schools.” Above: ODU's Engineering Clinic has evolved since being formed in 1984. It is now known as the ODU Business Gateway,charged with linking businesses and organizations with the expertise of the Old Dominion University campus.

Jim Cross: The Visionary

49

Another example of the civil engineering department adapting andchanging to meet the community’s needs was the hiring of DavidBasco as a coastal engineering professor in 1986. From Texas A&Mlike Cross, Basco felt this region lent itself to topical work in the field,not only academic study, but also through local agencies that neededthe expertise.

“It’s this ability for us from ODU to reach out and touch all thesepeople who need us. Water-wave mechanics, beach erosion, sea walls,bulkheads – all of this infrastructure that we rely on to protect usfrom flooding is right here,” Basco said.

Still, the College needed to grow. When Schafran came to OldDominion from Syracuse University, Drewry showed him whatamounted to the environmental engineering laboratory. “It was prettyapparent right oX that [the labs] weren’t really being used. There wasall sorts of detritus from the structural engineering group just lyingaround. There was archaic equipment, and a lot of the stuX they hadjust wasn’t functional,” Schafran said.

Excited by the challenge of resurrecting a lab, Schafran moved toNorfolk, and found there was little in the way of resources at OldDominion. He had no computer for a month, then finally received ahand-me-down from the civil engineering oWce. “It was diXerenttimes,” he laughed.

Despite the challenges, it was a good time to start, as well.Environmental engineering, Schafran’s specialty, was just catching onas a discipline, and through hustle, Old Dominion took advantage of achance to be first.

“We were the first in the Commonwealth to change the name ofthe department to civil and environmental engineering. We were thefirst to create a bachelor of science in environmental engineering,”he said.

The engineers at Old Dominion also tried to engage with theircommunity. Drewry, an environmental engineer himself, helpedoversee a project to bring sanitation to the impoverished communityof Bayview on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, in tandem with the VirginiaDepartment of Health and The Nature Conservancy. “It was a greatopportunity for us to make a diXerence,” Drewry said.

ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY

Underappreciated no more inside the College, the department ofengineering technology (actually three departments at first:mechanical, civil and electrical engineering technology) continued togrow throughout the 1980s.

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a faster pace than what the budgets would pay for.”In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Old Dominionlost some promising researchers to other schoolsand private industry because the school’s progresswasn’t fast enough.

In each engineering department, however,there were signs of growth.

CIVIL ENGINEERING

Old Dominion’s original plan as an engineeringschool was to oXer a general engineering educationfor every student, then stream into disciplines forthe later years of an undergraduate degree. But bythe time Drewry arrived on campus in 1976, thediXerent engineering departments had started totake shape.

The challenge was that they all needed to bebuilt from the ground up. “It was nice. I startedbasically with a blank sheet of paper,” Drewrysaid.

As an example, when taking over as chair ofthe new department, Drewry took a peek insidethe three file cabinets in the departmental oWce inDuckworth Hall. “The only thing that was in thosefile cabinets was decorations for the office forChristmas, the Fourth of July and other holidays,”he said.

A key component of civil engineering istransportation engineering. Unfortunately,there wasn’t the budget to hire a full-timetransportation engineer. “We had to use anadjunct, Dwight Farmer, chief engineer with theHampton Roads Planning District Commission.Thank God we had him. That way we had at leastone course in transportation engineering, beginningin the late 1970s,” Drewry said.

Farmer grew up in Norfolk. When he graduatedhigh school in 1969, engineering at Old DominionUniversity simply wasn’t an option. Ten yearslater, when he started teaching classes, Farmernoticed the progression. “ODU was just beginningto bud. It was a credible engineering program, butvery, very modest.”

Farmer actually taught as an adjunct for OldDominion University for 30 years, finally stoppingin 2009 when the Hampton Roads PlanningDistrict Commission named him executive director.By then, Old Dominion had finally hired atransportation engineer in Asad Khattak.Farmer had taught more than 1,000 engineeringstudents. That illustrated to him the value of OldDominion University’s engineering program.

“I think it helped folks believe they could stayhere and practice engineering. If the universitycould support them, people could do pretty muchanything they wanted, professionally, in HamptonRoads,” Farmer said. “Now, every week I meetsomebody who says ‘I was in your class.’”

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Above: A civil engineering river model.

John WeeseLong before he came to work at Old Dominion University,Associate Vice President Jerry Robertson realized the needfor what is now known as the ODU Business Gateway.

Working for a local manufacturing company that madedecorative Christmas garland, Robertson’s company washaving difficulty with static electricity causing the garlandto stick in the machine that cut it into strips.

“I suggested we go to Old Dominion University, to see ifthey had someone to help,” Robertson said. “So here Iam walking around the engineering building, seeing ifthere was someone who could help me. I finally endedup in electrical engineering, and in the office of someonewho ended up becoming a prettygood friend of mine, Griff McRee.He was the first one I found withhis door open.”

As a university in an urban area,surrounded by companies andmilitary bases doing real-worldengineering, Old Dominion’sexpertise could play a key role inthe community. The question askedin the1980s was, how do you do it?

Shortly after he started at OldDominion University, Dean JimCross tried to re-orient the engi-neering education model awayfrom a traditional baccalaureateengineering model, and towardone that was more service-oriented, to help the community solve problems.

“One of the first things I did was put together a proposalto establish an engineering clinic, which would emulatea medical clinic,” Cross said. “It would provide the facultyan opportunity to do engineering things, and it wouldprovide services to the local community in terms ofsolutions to engineering problems.”

Gary Crossman, a professor of engineering technology,was installed as the first director of the ODU EngineeringClinic. He laughed at the memory. “It was me, aphone, and a desk,” Crossman said, likening it to thefake companies that act as fronts for spy agencies inthe movies.

But as an engineering technologyfaculty member, Cross said Crossmanwas the perfect candidate to startand grow the clinic. “The initialplan was that the engineeringtechnology faculty would be thefaculty involved in these projects.And the engineering faculty wouldbe involved in the more traditionalengineering research,” he said.That in turn helped bolster thecredibility of the engineeringtechnology department, which wasstill being viewed a little skepticallyby some faculty members in thetraditional engineering disciplines.

The clinic was also helped by thefact that it had modest success

almost immediately. A grant from Virginia’s Center forInnovative Technology offered incentive for local companiesto seek out Old Dominion’s engineering expertise.

“They provided matching funds so we could go to industry.It gave them a good deal, and we would use faculty andstaff to solve those problems,” Crossman said.

Robertson, who started working at Old DominionUniversity in 1981 as resident engineer for the Collegeof Engineering, said the initial clients of the center werepeople “who showed up with [ideas for] better mouse-traps, and they wanted us to help build them.”

Robertson said the transformation in the center occurredwhen Old Dominion experts began to offer advice thatstretched beyond mousetraps, into finding different cheese.

“We should be a resource for the business community.We’ve got infrastructure that’s worth tens of millions ofdollars, paid for by taxpayers. We have intellectualcapital here that’s tremendous,” Robertson said. “But wealso had to be able to tell them their ‘baby’ wasn’t ascute as they thought it was.”

By broadening the scope of what theEngineering Clinic did, Old Dominion soonaccessed other state and federal fundingsources, offering retraining and job placementfor military personnel, and help with grantproposals. By the mid 1990s, the name ofthe office had been changed a couple oftimes, as it took on different functions.Robertson was appointed director late in thatdecade when then-Dean Bill Swart didn’t likeeither of the candidates being interviewedfor the position.

In 2004, Batten College Dean Oktay Baysalchanged its name to the Virginia AppliedTechnology and Professional DevelopmentCenter, reflecting the full range of servicesdone out of the center, jobs as varied asoutreach to schools and grant procurementfor military veterans.

The center had also proved its value to theuniversity as a whole, and in May 2010 wasre-launched as the ODU Business Gateway.

Today, the Gateway has transformed the wayhigher education interacts with businesses,acting as a business-friendly entry point tothe intellectual capital, innovative technologiesand world-class infrastructure of the university.

Operating from its headquarters at InnovationResearch Park @ ODU, the mission of the ODUBusiness Gateway is to provide companieslarge and small, not-for-profit organizations,military commands and entrepreneurs adedicated resource to help solve businessproblems, expand capabilities and createnew ventures.

Ever since its launch, the ODU BusinessGateway has evolved and expanded, addingthe Hampton Roads Veterans BusinessOutreach Center, which offers entrepreneurialdevelopment services and training to militaryveterans and reservists.

At its essence, however, the ODU BusinessGateway is still that one-stop shop for theperson in the community who wants problemssolved, and thinks Old Dominion’s expertisecan help. “Basically, that’s still what we dotoday,” Robertson said.

Crossman, who did his studies at the TechnicalInstitute before it merged with the School ofEngineering, said the laboratory equipmentbrought from the Technical Institute, especially inmechanical engineering technology, put the Schoolof Engineering equipment to shame.

Engineering definitely benefited from us comingover. In fact, we still use some of that equipment,”Crossman said. “Students today want somethingthat you punch a button and it spits out numbers.They don’t want to sit there and write downnumbers. I hate to tell them, but that still happensin the real world.” Crossman still teaches as anadjunct faculty member in engineering technology,even after having retired in 2008.

Alok Verma, Ray Ferrari Professor ofengineering technology, is another long-timefaculty member in engineering technology. Hestarted in 1981, and learned under many facultymembers from the old Technical Institute, includingRay Ferrari, whose endowed professorship Vermaholds.

Verma said the hands-on tradition of buildingthings has served the entire engineering college.“Of course the focus is different,” he said.“Engineering programs are focused on the researchand development and theoretical analysis. Andengineering technology programs are more hands-onand practical, and support manufacturing.”

That line of thinking inspired Old Dominion’screation of the Lean Institute in 2004, of whichVerma has been the only director. The LeanInstitute aids companies in the transition to leanmanufacturing techniques. These techniquesare of increasing importance as survival ofmanufacturing jobs depends on meeting bottom-line imperatives.

The hands-on nature of engineering technologyalso helped inspire design of the atrium that nowconnects the former Kaufman and DuckworthHalls. Opened in 1986, the atrium, laboratories,classrooms and office space started as a seniordesign project by a student working under EdgarKovner, professor of engineering technology.

The (Engineering) “Doctor” is In

“We should be a resourcefor the business community.We’ve got infrastructure

that’s worth tens of millionsof dollars, paid for bytaxpayers. We haveintellectual capital herethat’s tremendous.”

– Jerry Robertson

Associate Vice President Jerry Robertson (right) is executivedirector of what is now known as the ODU BusinessGateway.

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Mielke played a key role in the University’s move into modelingand simulation in the mid 1990s, a bold step considering the College ofEngineering and Technology had little in the way of background inthe emerging field. “I knew what it was, and I had experience innarrow pieces of it. But the stuX that began to happen here in theearly ’90s really opened the door to getting involved in modeling andsimulation,” he said.

Another electrical engineering field that Old Dominion researchersstepped into around that time was pulsed power – the use of extremelyshort, extremely high-voltage pulses of electricity to accomplish varioustasks.

Karl Schoenbach came to Norfolk in 1985 from Texas Tech.While earning his doctorate in physics in Germany, Schoenbach,now professor emeritus in electrical and computer engineering, hadbecome fascinated with plasma physics, the high-voltage system thatcreates X-rays.

“It was not even considered a field on its own,” Schoenbach said.“It was considered high-voltage engineering. But in the United Statesand Russia, in these two countries, they were involved in this field,driven to a large extent by military applications.”

In the early 1990s, faced with decreasing military expenditures, ahandful of researchers around the world started to look for otherapplications for the still-experimental technology.

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Opposite top: The logo for OldDominion’s world-leading FrankReidy Center for Bioelectrics.

Opposite bottom: Old DominionUniversity’s dynamic department ofelectrical and computer engineeringhas produced innovative, collaborativebreakthroughs in many fields.

Below: The lobby of the Engineeringand Computational Sciences Building.

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

In the 40 years since the department ofelectrical engineering was created in the Schoolof Engineering, perhaps no other department hasbeen responsible for more far-reaching innovations.The Virginia Modeling, Analysis and SimulationCenter, the Frank Reidy Center for Bio-electrics, and the Applied ResearchCenter were all started bythe present-day departmentof electrical and computerengineering.

Electrical engineering hasbeen transformed through theuse of computers, which makesOld Dominion’s successes in thefield notable and curious. Thirtyyears ago, the Old Dominion campuswasn’t exactly wired.

“The lack of computer system sticks out,” saidformer business administration student BevForbes, who started as a student worker in thedepartment of electrical engineering in 1978.Forbes is now director of experiential programs

for Old Dominion’s Career Management Center,and is liaison to the Frank Batten College ofEngineering and Technology.

“When we evolved from electrical engineeringto electrical and computer engineering, we reallyhad to change rapidly. Suddenly, it looked like thisthing was coming and we needed to jump on

board,” said Forbes, explaining that thecomputer engineering program

really was made up as facultywent along.

Roland Mielke, who wouldserve as chair of the electricaland computer engineeringdepartment for a dozen

years, also noticed the modestsurroundings when he relocated

to Norfolk from the University ofWisconsin in 1976. “I never felt like it was

an underdog program. It was much smaller, butthat has both positive and negative facets to it,”Mielke said. “I have been able to inf luenceprograms here because we weren’t so large,and we were growing and we weren’t so wellestablished.”

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“We had all this expertise, all the systems, and we needed to testnew concepts. I decided to try it. I wondered if we could affect thegrowth of certain biological species,” Schoenbach said.

Working with a colleague in the College of Sciences, Schoenbachstarted to use pulsed power to prevent biofouling – the transmissionof harmful biological pollutants, particularly through ship ballastwater. Encouraged by that success, Schoenbach sought out colleaguesat Eastern Virginia Medical School, including Stephen Beebe, now atOld Dominion, to see if pulsed power could kill other cells of livingthings.

“There was no funding at that time, but you needed to startsomewhere. And we found out that pulsed power can kill cancer cells.So this was the beginning,” Schoenbach said. Old Dominion Universityis now one of the world’s leading institutions in the field of bioelectrics.

MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Twenty-two miles: of all the numerical calculations involved inengineering, that very rudimentary figure is as important as any in thegrowth of the College of Engineering and Technology. That’s the distancebetween the Old Dominion campus in Norfolk and the NASA LangleyResearch Center, far closer than any other engineering school.

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More than any other thing, the partnership with NASA Langleywas responsible for the growth of Old Dominion’s engineering profile.“[NASA Langley] benefited from our engineers constantly beingthere, but at the same time, we were building engineering at ODU,”said Oktay Baysal, now professor and dean of the Batten College ofEngineering and Technology.

Aerospace engineering professor Bob Ash said the talent thatNASA Langley allowed the school to assemble in one department wasfar beyond what a small, new engineering school could normallyexpect. “It’s why we have a research school of substance,” he said.

The relationship was formed in the late 1960s, starting with afriendship between Old Dominion faculty member Gene Goglia andJohn Duberg of the NASA Langley Research Center. Starting with asingle grant for a summer research institute, the connection grew toa multimillion-dollar annual research allotment for NASA Langleyresearch center faculty members.

Jim Cross, himself an aerospace engineer, felt that NASA Langleywas the ace in his hand. Old Dominion was already part of the VirginiaAssociated Research Campus in Hampton, a graduate program inengineering that sought to provide a trained workforce for NASALangley and other workplaces that needed engineers.

Below: Rick Mckenzie (left),professor of modeling, simulationand visualization engineering, andJiang Li, professor of electrical andcomputer engineering.

Opposite: Karl Schoenbach with anengineering student.

Linda Vahala

There’s an analogy that Linda Vahala likes to repeatabout Old Dominion University’s College of Engineering,where she has worked since 1987.

Without an overabundance of resources, the College hashad to be nimble and flexible, said Vahala, now associatedean of the Batten College of Engineering and Technology.

“Someone once described ODU as a lengthy basketballplayer, who you knew was going to be successful whenhe grew into his body. I think that’s been very true ofour college and our university,” Vahala said.

The analogy is a little humorous coming from Vahala,who doesn’t reach five feet of stature herself. But thefirst female tenured faculty member in the College ofEngineering has been a larger-than-life presence forhundreds of students over her 25 years in the OldDominion faculty.

“So many students have kept in touch over the years. Irun across students a lot who have graduated, and theirchildren go here now,” said Vahala, who has responsibilityfor student success in her role with the College.

It’s a different university than the one at which whereVahala earned her Ph.D. in physics in 1983, specializing

in plasma physics and electromagnetics. Through KarlSchoenbach, professor of electrical engineering, Vahalawas exposed to plasma physics applications such aspulsed power and wireless communications on aircraft.

Her real passion, however, has been in working withOld Dominion engineering students, especially non-traditional ones like herself.

“We have a wide distribution of students. Some havegone on to do incredible things,” Vahala said. “I thinkour current dean, Oktay Baysal, has done an excellentjob of increasing our female faculty and supportingthem here.”

Vahala especially likes watching students perform, inand out of the classroom.

“I think all along they’ve beenvery innovative. They shoot for themoon. I think that’s what I likeabout the students here. They’revery creative and they think outsidethe box.”

First Female Tenured Faculty Member

own separate engineering management programs,”Unal said. That led to another innovation by OldDominion engineering: the introduction of videoinstruction.

The idea was first publicized in 1984. The plan,according to The Virginian-Pilot newspaper, wasto offer televised instruction of select graduateengineering classes from public universitiesaround the state, including Old Dominion, sostudents could mix and match courses to maketheir own degree.

With this multi-university initiative movingforward, Old Dominion forged ahead on its ownplans for distance learning education for a morecomplete curriculum, including undergraduate

courses. And it was engineering programs that ledthe way for the University.

“We started so slow with two video rooms inthe College of Education building,” said GaryCrossman, who taught engineering technologycourses via video learning. “We went over thereand taught our courses. And we were only teachingto Roanoke and Richmond.”

But Crossman said Old Dominion did it rightas well, investing in building satellite technology,and sites across the state and the country, sostudents could earn Old Dominion degrees frommany locations. “ODU created a whole system,”Crossman said. “It made it easy on the faculty toteach a distance-learning program.”

Cross wanted an ODU-specific presence onwhat he felt was the school’s “territory.” Throughseed funding from Old Dominion’s Office ofResearch, a permanent presence on the peninsulawas founded, originally called the GraduateEngineering Center. It has evolved into what isnow known as the Old Dominion UniversityPeninsula Higher Education Center.

Hanging over the partnership was an implicitunderstanding that the funding could one day slowto a trickle. At the peak, NASA Langley supplied80 percent of the grant funding received by theCollege of Engineering and Technology, a total ofmore than $3 million per year. In the late 1980s,added competition was seeking those dollars, andthe end of the Cold War with the Soviet Unionshrunk military budgets and brought a morecumbersome grant application process.

Old Dominion engineering had to make someother bets.

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Engineering management was one of thosewagers, and it has paid off handsomely. In themid 1980s, the school began exploring the idea ofcreating a department of engineering management,to train engineering students – largely at the

graduate level – in how to manage projects andother engineers.

Engineering management focuses on theintersection of engineering, technology andmanagement in high-technology environments.At the time the concept was explored, it was avery new discipline.

Larry Richards, an Old Dominion professorcharged with starting the program, hired ResitUnal in 1987 from the University of Missouri-Rolla, now the Missouri University of Science andTechnology, one of the only schools in the countrythen oXering engineering management.

“I came for an interview and they hired meimmediately, and Larry Richards and I started theprogram,” Unal said. “Industry recognized theneed for someone who was more multidisciplinary,to relate to the diXerent disciplines of engineering,to come up with the requirements and the overallsystem to run the operations.”

The department, initially a partnership withthe College of Business and Public Administration,grew to 250 graduate students within five years.Old Dominion started an on-site master’s degreeprogram for the U.S. Army at Fort Monroe.

“Our graduates started getting hired, and soonthe word got out, and some schools started their

Old Dominion University was one ofthe first universities in the country toinvest heavily in televised distancelearning instruction. The college ofengineering was among the first toparticipate. ODU is now one of thenation's largest providers of onlinedistance-learning courses.

58 59

Changes in the technology have gradually pushed Old DominionUniversity away from televised distance learning, and into on-lineclasses. There remains a large engineering presence in Old Dominion’sdistance-learning oXerings.

Unal taught engineering management through distance learningas a way to increase exposure to the program. “It was just a bigsuccess all over Virginia. We had big enrollments,” he said. In 2001,Old Dominion pioneered a program with the U.S. Navy nuclearsubmarine fleet, providing officers with an opportunity to earn amaster’s degree in engineering management, via CD-ROM.

“The submarine officers were going out to sea and staying therefor months. You can’t link to anything,” Unal said. “When we startedthe nuclear submarine program we had an expectation of 75 oWcersenrolling in this. In three years, we had more than 250.”

Admiral Robert F. Willard USN-Ret., former commander of theU.S. Pacific Fleet, is a graduate of the CD-ROM-based master’sprogram in engineering management.

David Basco was another of the early adopters of the technology asa teaching tool. He currently teaches graduate-level coastal engineeringprograms to dozens of students from 28 of 30 coastal states and 12foreign countries.

Old Dominion has also created a certificate program in coastalengineering, offered entirely online. The 12-credit, non-degreeprogram lets engineering students earn a certificate in coastalengineering, which can be turned into a master’s degree throughcredit transfers and the addition of a thesis.

“The student can work full time wherever they live, can take theseclasses on line, in real time or asynchronous,” Basco said. “And thecompanies love it because it’s such an economical way to train theirworkforce, and the supervisors get immediate feedback about howtheir employees are doing. But it turns out these are some of the beststudents in the classes.”

In general, Basco said he has enjoyed the students who have beenin his classes at Old Dominion. “When I got here, I noticed right awaythat the students were quite diXerent than the typical 17- or 18-year-old undergraduates that you’d get at other schools. Many of themwere older; they were frequently working.”

Old Dominion engineering students carry a reputation locally ofbeing capable, and willing to work. “Consulting engineers tell me thatall the time,” Basco said. “Because they’re willing to come up withsome practical experience by working part time, when [they] hirethem [they] already expect them to do more than a graduate fromVirginia Tech, with no experience.”

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Gene Hou

During his thirty years of teaching mechanical engineeringin the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology,Gene Hou has seen hundreds of students go through hisclasses, and they’re his inspiration.

“I learn from students every day, even now. Not necessarilythe knowledge from the book. But they ask me questions,they force me to think about why,” said Hou, who arrivedin Norfolk from the University of Iowa in 1983, with aless-than-perfect understanding of English. “When Istarted teaching here, there was a language barrier.English wasn’t my first language. But the students werevery good to me. They put up with me and they werepatient with me.”

Many of those first students might not be able to findHou now if they tried to look him up in the Batten Collegedirectory. That’s for a somewhat amusing reason.

“I am from Taiwan; my name there was Jean-Win Hou,”he said. Hou didn’t realize that the traditional malespelling of his name in English was G-E-N-E. One dayearly in his career at Old Dominion, he was comparing

salaries between male and female professors.“Unfortunately, our female faculty members were paid alot less. I worried that was happening to my salary, too,”Hou laughed.

The following fall, students were greeted by a “new”professor named Gene, and Hou hasn’t regretted amoment of his time at OldDominion University.

“We’re a small school with a smallfaculty, but there are a lot ofstudents I’m proud of,” he said.“[I] still teach undergraduateclasses every semester. Thosestudents, they want to get better.And if I can do a little bit to helpthem, that’s what I want to do.”

From Taiwan to Norfolk, With Two Names

Cross said in the almost 30 years he’s been inHampton Roads he’s seen more and more localcompanies hiring Old Dominion engineeringgraduates. “When I first came here, every placeyou went into [had] engineers from Virginia Tech.But I think over the last 25 years we’ve become atleast equal.”

In fact, at the two largest employers of engineersin the area, Newport News Shipbuilding andNASA Langley, ODU engineers comprise thelargest alumni group.

Ash said the “blue-collar” composition of OldDominion engineering students means that theyhave a reputation for one thing in the workplace:“They roll up their sleeves and go to work.”

Despite the successes, challenges remainedfor engineering at Old Dominion University.

Enrollment had grown dramatically, and statefunding was again threatened by budget cuts inthe late 1980s. Worse, the specter of NASA grantsdropping sharply threatened to severely limit whatthe school could do, both academically andthrough its research.

The threatened cuts merely caused ODUengineering’s ingenuity to accelerate. JimCross found a willing partner in Old DominionUniversity’s new president, James V. Koch. Thetwo men with their strong personalities didn’talways see eye-to-eye. But together, they helpedthe College of Engineering and Technology grow inways no one could have anticipated.

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Jimmy Black

Jimmy Black isn’t shy about admitting that his favoritecourse at Old Dominion University was SCUBA.

The northern Virginia native fell in love with the beachwhen he came to Old Dominion in1977, and made life-long friendson the second floor of Rogers Hall.He still has reunions with thosefriends every year, more than 30years after graduating.

The 1980 electrical engineeringgraduate is proud of his school,and that pride has only grownin the years since he’s left OldDominion and founded BBGIncorporated, an electronicengineering design firm based inSuffolk. “It’s been amazing watchingthat school transform,” Black said.

He’s president and senior engineerat BBG, and his friend and fellowOld Dominion graduate JoeGander is vice president andsenior engineer. Gander was onthe ODU varsity sailing team, andthough he was a few years behindBlack, they were acquaintances atschool. They didn’t hatch their planto go into business together untilthey met working for Unidyne,Gander’s first job after graduation,Black’s second.

Black said the company they cofounded has beeninvolved in some exciting projects in the past couple ofdecades, including a video receiver for a spacecraftbuilt to fly to Mars, and a battery-powered GPS emitter

that helps police officers do aninstant trace on a vehicle travelingat high speed. “We’ve had somefantastic opportunities, and we getto build things, something everyengineer wants to do,” Black said.

The company has also deepenedits connection to Old DominionUniversity, hiring interns and full-time employees from the FrankBatten College of Engineering andTechnology. Black is a member ofthe Batten College EngineeringAdvisory Board, and he andGander endow a scholarship inthe College. They support theenvironmentally themed engineeringECOnference every year.

“I’ve always been proud of ODU, ithelped me for life,” Black said.“But I feel even prouder as timegoes by.”

ODU Grads Make Mark Locally

Jimmy Black, left, withfellow Old Dominiongraduate and businesscolleague, Joe Gander.

Black said thecompany they

cofounded has beeninvolved in some excitingprojects in the pastcouple of decades,

including a video receiverfor a spacecraftbuilt to fly to Mars,

and a battery-poweredGPS emitter that helpspolice officers do an

instant traceon a vehicle

traveling at high speed.

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CHAPTER 4MAKING AN IMPACT

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The facility is now under the control of the state-led VirginiaCommercial Space Flight Authority; Old Dominion University still hasa seat on the Authority’s board of directors. Billie Reed, an engineeringmanagement professor who was executive director of the Authoritysince its formation in 1995, retired in November 2012. Dale K. Nash, a29-year veteran of the aerospace industry, was appointed to serve asthe Authority’s new executive director, beginning July 31, 2012.

Virginia Secretary of Transportation Sean T. Connaughton saidNash’s “years of experience in the aerospace industry will be atremendous boost to the Authority as it works to become the numberone commercial space port in the U.S. With his leadership, theCommonwealth can seize upon the tremendous advantages we have inthe aerospace industry to grow the VCSFA and create much neededeconomic development and jobs.”

None of these advantages that Secretary Connaughton speaksabout would even exist were it not for a timely partnership with OldDominion University.

The College of Engineering and Technology also partnered withNASA in another unique way – taking over operation of the giant,historic Full-Scale Wind Tunnel on the NASA Langley campus. Thetunnel had allowed researchers to gain a comprehensive understanding

As the 1990s began, Old Dominion University was feeling theeffects of an economy in recession. State support had dropped forhigher education at the same time that enrollment had shot skyward.In regard to engineering at Old Dominion, it was a time when necessitybecame the mother of invention.

The working relationship between Jim Cross, dean of the OldDominion University College of Engineering and Technology, and newODU President James V. Koch was helped by the fact that they sawthe university in the same terms.

Koch arrived from the University of Montana in 1990. Kochquickly deduced that a university of more than 15,000 students – withthe least per-student funding of any public doctoral university in thestate – couldn’t be all things to all people.

“I was very much an advocate of what I would call selectiveexcellence,” said Koch. “I thought the university should concentrateits resources in fewer areas, and in five or six programs try to becomenational, or even international, leaders. I argued that would result in ahalo eXect, and through those programs, grow the entire university.”

In 1984, Cross had recognized that Old Dominion’s engineeringcollege needed to emphasize its strengths, and poured much of hisenergy into building up areas where he felt that the University couldmake a difference, in terms of national research and communityengagement. And he wasn’t shy about articulating where the universityshould place its emphasis.

It involved risks like the audacious plan for the College ofEngineering and Technology to take over the historic NASA launchfacility on Wallops Island, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, which hasevolved into the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

The unusual marriage between public university and NASA facilitycame at a time when the federal agency was facing reduced budgets.A launch facility that had done pioneering work in the space program,NASA Wallops was deemed surplus at a time when the KennedySpace Center in Florida was handling Space Shuttle launches –NASA’s primary emphasis at the time.

Engineering Management Professor Larry Richards suggested thatOld Dominion University oXer to take over the facility. There werechallenges, not the least of which was the typical shortage of money.“But we pressed on, and developed a commercial spaceport on thesouth part of Wallops Island,” Cross said. “At one point it became toobig for ODU, and the state took it over.”

Above: A wind turbine at the Full-Scale Tunnel at NASA Langley. OldDominion’s College of Engineeringand Technology managed this facilityfor a decade.

Opposite: The Virginia CommercialSpaceflight Authority Wallops Islandlaunch facility on Virginia’s EasternShore.

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With Old Dominion’s College of Engineeringand Technology underwriting the salaries,Reed and Woodhams built a customer base,starting with a 1996 agreement with theUnited States Air Force. A year later, NASAbegan to provide financial support again inwhat was now known as the Mid-AtlanticRegional Spaceport.

The location of Wallops Island, 1,000 milesnorth of the Kennedy Space Center inFlorida, has proven to be crucial for the U.S.Space Program. Its different launch orbitprovides easier access to the InternationalSpace Station.

The Commonwealth of Virginia soon recognizedthe value of a commercial spaceport insideits borders. It became a partner in the space-port, creating the Virginia Commercial SpaceFlight Authority (VCSFA).

Today, the VCFSA is a state facility, rolledunder the Secretary of Transportation. Reedretired in November 2012 as the Authority’sexecutive director. Baysal said it was neverOld Dominion’s intention to operate acommercial spaceport in perpetuity.

“Before, the state was looking at this asexperimental knowledge that’s being developed.Now that it’s working as a commercialspaceport, this is just like the port, rail, androads,” Baysal said. “We conceived it, wedeveloped it, we did the hard work behindit, sustaining it while resources were extremelyrare. We showed that it was successful, butnow we gave it back.”

Baysal continued: “Universities don’t runports; they don’t run spaceports. But wedemonstrated that it is doable. We said,‘Hey, we’re a state institution, whatever wedo for our own state, this is a payback.’”

Mission to MARS

In retrospect, it still seems like a pipe dream.

In the early 1990s, Old Dominion University had morethan 20 years of a research partnership with NASA.But a mid-sized public university leading a multimillion-dollar effort to blast things into space? Impossible.

Yet in the early 1990s, that’s exactly what Old DominionUniversity did.

At a time when NASA was looking toshed costs, engineering managementprofessor Larry Richards heardabout plans to mothball the historicWallops Island launch facility onVirginia’s Eastern Shore. Createdby NASA’s predecessor agency, theNational Advisory Committee forAeronautics, the facility had beenpivotal in the U.S. effort in theSpace Race in the 1950s and ’60s.Project Mercury capsules had beentested at the site in support of NASA’smanned space flight program.

Jim Cross, then-dean of the OldDominion University College ofEngineering and Technology, saidRichards thought Old DominionUniversity could take it over.

“They were interested in ODUcoming up there and providing graduate courses, andproviding other assistance in the operation,” Cross said.

“During the course of the discussions, the possibilityof a commercial spaceport surfaced. So we startedreally hammering on that. Larry Richards and I spent alot of time trying to develop the idea.”

After the idea was more complete, Richards and Crossbrought it to then-Old Dominion President James V. Koch.

“He thought, ‘My God, that mightwork,’” Cross said.

Koch agreed it was an unusualventure for a public university.“It’s different, for sure. But lots ofuniversities have research parks. Wesimply created a research facility forour aerospace engineering program,”he said. “It was a great opportunity todo research, and also make an impactin terms of economic development.”

In 1992, Old Dominion set up itsCenter for Commercial SpaceInfrastructure to apply for dual-usegrants, allowing both military andgovernment, as well as commercial,launch capabilities. The challengefor Old Dominion was that themarket for commercial spaceflighthad to be built from scratch.Historically, blasting objects, aircraftand rockets into space had been

done only by NASA and the military.

Oktay Baysal, current dean of the Batten College ofEngineering and Technology, said the first opportunityexplored was the Iridium Project, an effort to offer cheapersatellite telephone technology to compete with cellularphones by launching a network of lower-altitude satellites.

“But then, [advancements in] cell phones killed them.Iridium went belly-up. The customer we were countingon disappeared,” Baysal said.

Still believing in the value of the commercial spaceport,the Old Dominion College of Engineering dispatchedtwo faculty members from its engineering managementdepartment, Billie Reed and Wayne Woodhams, togenerate other commercial opportunities. “We put themon Colley Avenue in some shack, and we said, ‘This isyour office.’ That’s all we could afford,” Baysal said. OldDominion would pay the salaries of the two Spaceportdirectors for several years, investing belief in the initiative.

On Virginia’s Eastern Shore

In 1992,Old Dominion

set up its Center forCommercial SpaceInfrastructureto apply for

dual-use grants,allowing both militaryand government, aswell as commercial,launch capabilities.

of aerodynamics, testing everything from air-planes, to space capsules, to a nuclear submarine.

Taking over operation of the facility in 1996,Old Dominion researchers tested everything fromrace cars, to stop signs, to a replica of theWright brothers’ plane, before the facility wasdecommissioned in 2009.

“I thought we had significant opportunities inaeronautics and aerospace with these facilities soclose by. We had a track record with NASA Langleyas well,” Koch said.

There were challenges in taking over the facility,not the least of which was resistance from someNASA oWcials, but Cross said the opportunity wasworth the risk. “We proved them wrong, is whatwe did,” he said.

The emergence of Old Dominion University –and Hampton Roads – as a modeling andsimulation hub was another example of theCollege of Engineering and Technology stridingconfidently into the unknown. The story of thecreation of the Virginia Modeling, Analysis andSimulation Center – and Old Dominion’s modelingand simulation engineering education fromundergraduate through post-doctoral – is asunlikely as the creation of the Spaceport.

However, the Spaceport came about whenNASA was looking to shed costs. The foray intomodeling and simulation began when the U.S.Department of Defense was investing in modelingand simulation as a training tool, and neededan academic partner. A personal relationship,combined with bold investment in the mid 1990s,allowed Old Dominion to emerge as a leader inhigher education modeling and simulationresearch.

“We had no background in what was beingcalled modeling and simulation. Actually thecomputational things we did were in fact modelingand simulation, aerodynamics modeling. But itbecame much more than that,” Cross said.

Since the 1980s, the U.S. military had beenbeginning to substitute simulations for live-actionmilitary training exercises, as a cost savings.

Opposite: A wide-angle view of an inertMinotaur V launch vehicle is erected on theMid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0B atNASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Photo courtesy of NASA Wallops/Jackie Adkins

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“The first year, we set about trying to make the thingrun, just physically run the plant and try to get itcalibrated. We had to see exactly what it was we had,and develop all of the instrumentation,” Cross said.

Another obstacle that the Old Dominion team faced wasthe rule (eventually rescinded) that researchers couldn’ttest anything involving airplanes, out of fear the competitionwould hurt NASA’s existing wind tunnel facilities. “Theythought they were going to kill us with that,” Cross said.“So we tested garden sheds, we did traffic signs, youname it.” If there was a potential client interested inwind-testing a product, the Old Dominion team madecertain to close the deal.

Facing a budget crunch, Cross went further afield.He took a trip to Charlotte, NorthCarollina and knocked on thedoors of NASCAR race teams.“ I convinced one team, PenskeRacing, to come up to the tunnel,and see what we had. They spent aday and a half with us. At the endof the day, they contracted with usfor $250,000,” he said. Eventually,33 of the 40 NASCAR teams cameto do testing at the tunnel.

NASA, in due course, realized thevalue of the LFST as an aeronauticalfacility, opening it up once againto airplane testing. That led to morehistory visiting the tunnel in 2003.

On the hundredth anniversary ofthe Wright brothers’ December 17,1903 inaugural flight, Ken Hyde,who spent more than a decadetrying to understand the secretsbehind their pioneering flightsuccess, brought a reproduction of the Wright Flyer totest in the LFST as part of the Wright Experience, are-enactment of the life-changing event sanctioned bythe descendants of the Wright brothers.

“We met historians, the re-enactment team, pilots,”Landman said. “That was a really fun period. Wepublished a lot of stuff, which was of great interest, inpart because the Wrights were a little bit closed in whatthey would allow people to see. There were never fullperformance tests done in the aircraft because there wasno opportunity.”

As tests continued, and the Old Dominion teamdemonstrated its ability, NASA began to rely on theLFST once again. A Center for Experimental Aeronauticswas created, and Old Dominion researchers partnered

with researchers from Florida State, putting many NASAresearchers through training on how to conduct experiments.

Old Dominion’s plans for the wind tunnel were broughtto a halt in September of 2003with Hurricane Isabel, whichbrought four feet of water into thefacility and shut it down for sixmonths. It opened again, and test-ing resumed, but its days werenumbered.

The nationwide trend away fromphysical prototype testing in windtunnels also shone a spotlight onthe timeworn facility. With emptywind tunnels being closed byNASA across the country, an agingstructure on flood-prone land wasan easy target, no matter howhistoric. Still, the planned closurewas met with dismay from itsformer clients, including Ken Hydeof the Wright Experience, whowrote state legislators asking thatthe historic facility be preserved.

The facility was decommissionedpermanently in the fall of 2009, and demolition startedthe following January.

Oktay Baysal, now dean of engineering at ODU, said eachcenter or institute or research project is founded for acertain mission. “When that mission is accomplished, weroll it off and give a chance to new enterprises,” he said.

The Langley Full-Scale Tunnel was one such mission forOld Dominion, and when NASA Langley informed theschool it was proceeding with a previously scheduleddemolition, its time was up.

“Here was another successful chapter added byODU engineering to the proud history of a nationallandmark,” Baysal said.

For the first half of flight’sfirst century, there werefew facilities moreimportant than the

massive, full-scale windtunnel at NASA Langley.And for more than adecade, that tunnel wasoperated by aerospaceengineers from OldDominion University.

Langley Full-Scale Tunnel

It was like a baseball player getting the keys to WrigleyField, or an opera singer getting a job at La Scala.

Mankind recently began its second century of flight. Formuch of its first century, there were few facilities moreimportant to the development of flight than the massive,full-scale wind tunnel at NASA Langley. And for morethan a decade, that tunnel was operated by aerospaceengineers from Old Dominion University.

“That was a very fun experience,” said Drew Landman,professor of mechanical and aerospace engineeringwith the Batten College of Engineering and Technology,one of several faculty members who worked at thehistoric facility while Old Dominion managed it. “You’reawe-struck by how big it is. It was just huge.”

Construction of the Full-Scale Tunnel by the NationalAdvisory Committee for Aeronautics began in February1930, in a swampy corner of Langley Field. The entirecomplex cost almost $1 million at the time. When itformally opened in late May 1931, its test sectionmeasuring 30 feet high, 60 feet wide and 56 feet longmade it the largest wind tunnel in the United States.

For almost 65 years, NASA Langley’s Full-Scale Tunnel(LFST) allowed researchers of aerodynamics to gain acomprehensive understanding of the effects of air flowand air resistance on objects ranging from World War IIfighters, to the Mercury space capsule, to the fastestsubmarine in the world. The LFST helped generations ofaircraft fly more efficiently.

But the end of the Cold War, followed by deep cuts toNASA’s budget, caused the aging facility to be shuttered

by NASA in October 1995. Old Dominion Universityresearchers had been doing work on the NASA Langleycampus for almost 30 years. Suddenly, this giant facility,a National Park Service National Historic Landmark,literally dropped out of the sky for their use.

Jim Cross, former dean of the College of Engineeringand Technology, said the opportunity arose in a peculiarfashion. Negotiations for Old Dominion to take overoperation of the much smaller (but also mothballed)Transonic Wind Tunnel at NASA Langley had fallenthrough.

Disappointed with the news, Old Dominion officialswere stunned with the offer that came next from then-NASA Langley Director Paul Holloway.

“We went to the director to discuss the situation withhim. He said, ‘Well, we’re about to shut down the Full-Scale Tunnel, what would you think of that one?’” Crosssaid. They didn’t have to think twice.

After somewhat acrimonious negotiations over thehandover, as many NASA employees were uncomfortablewith their historic wind tunnel being operated bysomeone else, an interim operating agreement wassigned on August 1, 1996. A year later, Old Dominionresearchers took control of the facility, and realized justhow much work needed to be done to make the LFSTable to do aerodynamics testing again.

“The deck was stacked very heavily against us. Theystripped the place, took everything out of it. Even thingslike wall outlets for power. They did everything theycould to dissuade us from doing it,” Cross said.

Once work began in earnest, Old Dominionaerospace engineers rebuilt the testingfacility. Cross said without the work ofLandman and Colin Britcher, Old Dominionprofessor of mechanical and aerospaceengineering, the LFST would never haveoperated again.

Batten College Shapes a Piece of History

Left: The chamber of the Langley Full-ScaleTunnel was used by Old Dominion Universityengineers to test everything from gardensheds to NASCAR racecars.

Opposite: When it opened in 1931, theLangley Full-Scale Tunnel was the largesttest facility of its kind in the United States.

70 71

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the borders of the University’s campus for opportunities to doresearch and help spur economic development in the region.

There were accomplishments on campus. A civil engineeringstudent, Samantha Salvia, became Old Dominion University’s first –and still only – Rhodes Scholar in 1996.

Salvia, a native of Norristown, Pennsylvania, was a heavily re-cruited field hockey star who said she picked Old Dominion becauseoWcials at the university promoted their engineering department asmuch as they sold their team. She helped the team win a nationalchampionship in 1992 and also played on the U.S. National Team.Salvia earned a master in science from Stanford after returningfrom Oxford, and today is an environmental engineer in California.

In 1997, new Dean Bill Swart came to Old Dominion Universityfrom the Newark College of Engineering-New Jersey Institute ofTechnology.

Swart was impressed with the diXerent forays into research andpartnerships that Old Dominion had undertaken, but as an indus-trial engineer who had made a career of helping things work better,felt like operations of the College of Engineering and Technologyneeded to be more eWcient. “There were some pieces in place, butthey had to be better utilized,” Swart said.

In addition to growing the program – student credit hours inthe college grew by 23 percent in his four years as dean, and annual

In October 1994, the Department of Defense set up a war-gamingenterprise center in nearby SuXolk, known as the Joint Training,Analysis and Simulation Center (JTASC). An oWcial for JTASC, acivil servant named Gene Newman, made a presentation that fall tosenior administration oWcials at Old Dominion University. Throughan existing professional relationship with Roland Mielke, then-chairof the department of electrical engineering at Old Dominion,Newman proposed that Old Dominion take the lead in providingthe academic support to JTASC as they developed new simulationtraining technology.

Mielke and Newman had an ally in Cross, and another one inKoch. The president actually funded the first year of the nascentresearch project – which would become the Virginia Modeling, Analysisand Simulation Center – with $500,000 of university money thatwasn’t readily available.

“It really wouldn’t have happened without us, as a university,making it a priority,” Koch said. The university’s investment “came ata time of really tight budgets. But it’s been substantially successful –successful in the creation of lots of jobs, and in the growth of thisuniversity. We took a risk and it paid oX.”

Other oX-campus alliances were formed in these years with theThomas JeXerson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, andwith the Virginia International Raceway in Danville. It continued thepattern of the College of Engineering and Technology looking beyond

Right and opposite: Old Dominionhas become one of the leadingresearch universities in the modelingand simulation discipline, movingboldly to meet research needs ofthe Department of Defense, andbranching into other fields ofmodeling and simulation research,from transportation to health care.”

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In the fall of 1996, Old Dominion University modeling andsimulation operations began in the Tidewater CommunityCollege building in Portsmouth. “It was Tom Mastaglioas director, he brought me on as a technical director, andwe had a secretary. That was VMASC,” Mielke said.

VMASC formally opened in July 1997, and began to fulfillits mission of training modeling and simulation professionals,and providing the academic support for the emergingdiscipline. VMASC also emerged quickly as a favorite ofgrant-funding agencies, and not just military ones.

“We had a ball. We recruited over 100 corporate membersin the time I was there. By the end of the third year, wewere generating more contract dollars than any centeror department at Old Dominion,” Mastaglio said.

Just as important as the client service work, Old Dominionalso invested heavily in modeling and simulation education.By the fall semester of 1998, the academic program wasunder way, with nine students admitted into a newlyinstituted master’s program in modeling and simulation.

Soon after, a doctoral program was created, and thefirst recipient of a Ph.D. in modeling and simulation fromOld Dominion, in fact from any university in the world,was a retired submarine captain named John Sokolowski.Sokolowski is now executive director of VMASC.

Sokolowski’s entire academic career has been at OldDominion University, so he has seen how modeling andsimulation has evolved from straight subcontract workfor the military to a far-reaching discipline, useful acrossmyriad fields.

“It certainly had its roots in the military side of things,but clearly it has applications in just about any area youcan think of. When we started to explore those differentareas, the field became completely wide open,” he said.

Modeling and simulation spans the campus as well. WhileVMASC grew, ODU engineering’s Center for AdvancedEngineering Environments (CAEE), founded in 2001,was building its own international reputation developinginnovative technologies, strategies and approaches foradvanced learning environments and networks.

“Its director, Ahmed K. Noor, Lobeck Chair and EminentScholar of Modeling, Simulation and Visualization,has written frequently about his visionary research intocollaborative distributed engineering knowledge, andadvanced learning technologies,” said Oktay Baysal,current dean of engineering at ODU.

Baysal said Noor’s writing has made the cover of 16issues of Aerospace America magazine and MechanicalEngineering magazine, “which are circulated to hundredsof thousands of engineers all over the world.”

With the creation of an undergraduate program inmodeling, simulation and visualization engineering in2010, ODU engineering also became the first engineeringcollege in the country to offer a complete advancededucation in modeling and simulation, from undergraduatethrough post-doctoral.

At the VMASC campus in Suffolk, researchers fromdisciplines ranging from transportation, to health care,to the social sciences, work collaboratively to solve problemsand add to an ever-expanding body of knowledge.Sokolowski said there are as many as 40,000 modelingand simulation jobs available worldwide right now. Hesaid Old Dominion has developed a reputation ofproviding skilled professionals to fill those positions.

“Our graduates are going all over the place. Clearly,there are many that are staying in Hampton Roads. Butwe’ve got people that have taken positions around thecountry. We have one graduate who actually went to theHanes underwear company to start up a modeling andsimulation group,” he said.

This multi-disciplinary approach also served Old Dominionwell when Joint Forces Command had its budget cut in aDepartment of Defense reorganization. VMASC got itsstart from Department of Defense funding, but has offsetcuts to defense grants through new investments in fieldslike homeland security

VMASC remains the place a sitting governor can cometo offer praise, and speak about modeling and simulationas an asset to the entire state of Virginia.

“Here’s how I see it: When you see computers, I seejobs. When you see solutions, I see tax revenue. So,that’s a good partnership that we’ve got to keep going,”McDonnell said.

Modeling and Simulation

With the conference room at the Virginia Modeling,Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) filled to capacity,Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell stood and marveledbefore crowd full of industry leaders from across theUnited States about how far modeling and simulationhad come.

“I remember not so long ago when you talked aboutmodeling, it was [about] a person in tight clothes walkingdown a runway,” McDonnell said wryly.

The governor had been invited to the VMASC campus inSuffolk as the keynote speaker at the annual NationalModeling and Simulation Coalition business meeting.He told the audience that the general assembly is keenlyaware of how modeling and simulation has grown as adiscipline, and as an economic engine, in the region.

“It’s a real source of pride to have [VMASC] in HamptonRoads, and really in Virginia, because it’s a statewideand regional asset,” McDonnell said.

Almost 20 years ago, a combination of luck, boldnessand determination began the process of turning OldDominion University, and particularly VMASC, intoone of the nation’s leading university modeling andsimulation research centers.

It started with a strategic shift by the United States militaryin the 1980s. Because of cost considerations, allbranches of the military moved away from live-actionmilitary exercises into practice drills done with virtualships, planes and soldiers.

At the same time, Old Dominion Director of MilitaryActivities Captain Dick Whalen, USN-Ret. and PresidentJames V. Koch were eager, in a time of tight budgetsfor higher education, to seek opportunities for militarypartnerships.

In response to the military’s increased need for modelingand simulation, a war-gaming enterprise center, staffedwith 100 military and government contractors, was setup in Suffolk in October 1994, across the ElizabethRiver from Old Dominion University.

The Joint Training, Analysis and Simulation Center(JTASC) was charged with developing the processes andprocedures, workforce and facility to conduct jointsimulation training exercises. But there wasn’t the localworkforce, or any institution of higher learning in thecountry equipped to train them and satisfy JTASC’sacademic needs. Whalen invited Gene Newman, asenior civil servant from the Suffolk facility, to address

senior Old Dominion administration about what trainingrequirements the new center would have.

Jim Cross, then-dean of the College of Engineering andTechnology, attended the presentation.

Cross said the engineering field was already usingmodeling as part of many of its experiments, but whatthe military was looking for was something different. “Ithought to myself, ‘What the hell is modeling andsimulat ion? What does the military think that was?’Because we were going to do it,” Cross said.

Roland Mielke, chair of the electrical and computerengineering department, was charged with seeing whatopportunities could be created between the College ofEngineering and Technology and the military.

Mielke had the advantage of having known Newmanfor a number of years. That fall semester, Mielke andNewman worked on a proposal inviting the University totake the lead in providing academic training to militarypersonnel.

“[Newman] was clever enough to realize that if he wasgoing to build a modeling and simulation enterprise inthe area, he was going to need academic support,”Mielke said. “The other schools didn’t pay attention,because they were further away, and it wasn’t clear itwas going to amount to all that much. But we did payattention.”

Mielke said President Koch was extremely important inthe formation of what would become VMASC. The statehadn’t yet caught onto the potential of modeling andsimulation, so Koch underwrote the initial funding fromthe university’s budget.

“He front-ended the first $300,000 or $400,000 whenthe University didn’t have a lot of money. That was atremendous risk that he took,” Mielke said. By the nextyear, the state had begun to invest in modeling andsimulation at Old Dominion University, and McDonnell,on his visit, pointed out that the state government is thesecond-largest funder of VMASC.

As a modest operation, the first point of order was tohire a director. For that job, Mielke and Newman choseTom Mastaglio, a retired artillery officer who was workingin the then-hub of modeling and simulation, Orlando,Florida. “We stole a guy from industry down there. Theywere 15 years ahead of us, and they had the fundingagencies from the army down there,” Mielke said.

An Opportunity Seized

Retired submarine captainJohn Sokolowski was thefirst recipient of a Ph.D. inmodeling and simulationfrom Old Dominion, andfrom any university in theworld. Sokolowski is nowexecutive director ofVMASC.

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research expenditures more than doubled to $11.4 million – Swartalso attempted to improve the working climate for faculty and staX inthe College.

He initiated regular college-wide faculty and staX meetings, andstarted morale-boosting events like the college-wide cook-out to kickoX the year, and the international potluck dinner just before theChristmas holidays. “I really wanted to change the culture of theplace, because there was so much potential there,” Swart said.

Under Swart, ODU engineering began the process of launchingenterprise centers, facilities created by Old Dominion University, butleveraging partnerships with local government and industry.

One such initiative started under Swart was the Applied ResearchCenter (ARC), a facility constructed by the city of Newport News toamplify the research being done at the Thomas Jefferson NationalAccelerator Facility.

Old Dominion researchers such as Karl Schoenbach, professor andeminent scholar of electrical engineering, had been doing researchcollaborations involving the national test facility for atmosphericpressure plasma, the high-tech particle accelerator and free electronlaser. In May of 2001, the high-tech ARC opened its doors, housingscientists and inventors from Old Dominion University, ChristopherNewport University, the College of William and Mary, Norfolk StateUniversity and JeXerson Lab.

Created as an “enterprise center” of the College of Engineeringand Technology, much like the Virginia Modeling, Analysis andSimulation Center, ARC provides university resources, such as facultyand student expertise, to meet industry and government needs.

At the dedication ceremony for ARC, Swart said it “makes itpossible for Old Dominion to begin collaborative eXorts with industrymuch sooner than would have been otherwise possible. The equipmentwill greatly facilitate the preparation of research proposals and thetraining of graduate students.”

Now 11 years old, ARC is home to an interdisciplinary team ofresearchers working in materials science and laser technology, onscientific and technological problems in the areas of thin films, laserand plasma, and the newer fields of micro technology, nanotechnologyand biomedical engineering.

ARC Director Hani Elsayed-Ali, professor and eminent scholar ofelectrical engineering at Old Dominion University, said after a littlemore than a decade, the span of research ranges from micro electronicsand nanoelectronics, to solar cells, to laser and plasma technology.

“Our funding is very diverse, also, from NASA, from the NationalScience Foundation, the Department of Energy and several industries,”

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Who are the people becoming industry leaders throughmodeling and simulation education at Old DominionUniversity? They’re people like Johnny Garcia.

An affable Navy veteran from Texas, Garcia said it waspure chance – a “mistake” – that brought him into themodeling and simulation field, and into Old DominionUniversity’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis and SimulationCenter (VMASC). Some mistake. Seventeen years later,Garcia is founder of SimIs, Inc., an information technologyservices corporation headquartered in Portsmouth, andjust 10 minutes away from his alma mater.

“It’s been sometimes magical making this happen,”Garcia said.

Brought to Hampton Roads by the Navy, Garcia wasselected to the prestigious Seaman-to-Admiral programin 1994, around the time the Navy was downsizing.Simultaneously, Garcia heard that Joint WarfareSimulation and Training, part of what would becomeJoint Forces Command, was hiring.

Offered a job as a computer operator by the companynow known as General Dynamics, Garcia was dischargedfrom active duty. “I had never been exposed to simulations.That started my simulation career,” Garcia said.

Showing real aptitude for his new vocation, Garcia waspromoted from computer operator to computer engineer,developing the models himself. In those five years, Garciabecame passionate about the science behind modelingand simulation.

In 2003, that interest and his jobbrought Garcia in contact withAndreas Tolk, professor of engineeringmanagement and systems engineeringat Old Dominion’s Batten College ofEngineering and Technology. Whilehe continued to work professionally,Garcia began his doctorate throughOld Dominion’s VMASC while alsoworking closely with Executive DirectorJohn Sokolowski.

The fit was perfect between Garcia,a roll-up-his-sleeves problem-solverhis whole career, and Old DominionUniversity. “ODU is different,” hesaid. “A Ph.D. in modeling andsimulation, any Ph.D., is about theory.What ODU did is take me out of that

theoretical thinking and put it in context. How was itgoing to be used outside of academia?

“It’s great to show that what you’re doing is valid or notvalid, but show me an example. Build me somethingthat’s going to leverage that.”

Now, Garcia presents his work at conferences aroundthe world. “One of my opening lines is [a quote fromGeorge Box] that ‘all models are wrong, some are useful.’This is true,” he said. “You can’t expect a model or asimulator to give you an answer. It helps you make betterdecisions with quantitative and qualitative data.”

The expertise he gained also helped Garcia take the bigstep and launch SimIS in 2007. The company has grownto more than 40 employees, and the Hampton RoadsChamber of Commerce named SimIS as its 2012Portsmouth Small Business of the Year. Garcia could takethis business anywhere, but he said he wants to stayright here.

The key is education. He said the region needs to trainmodeling and simulation professionals to fill those highlyskilled jobs. Garcia makes a point of hiring computerscience and modeling and simulation engineeringstudents, to give them hands-on experience while theyget their degree, like he received back in the 1990s.

“When they graduate with their bachelor’s degree, Iwant them to have experience. And it all has to do withthe classes that our schools are providing,” Garcia said.

Johnny GarciaThe Best Mistake He’s Ever Made

Johnny Garcia and the staff of SimIS, Inc.

Old Dominion University’s RhodesScholar, Samantha Salvia.

into a new field of research or enterprise broughtits own expertise to a growing college.

Far from being the unwelcome intruder inengineering higher education in Virginia, OldDominion University was demonstrating that itbelonged, and in some disciplines, that it wasleading the way.

“I’m as proud of my time at Old Dominion as Iam of anything I’ve done in my career,” said Swart,who left Old Dominion in 2002 to become provostand vice chancellor for academic aXairs at EastCarolina University.

The past decade has seen the fruits of theselabors – of many talented and visionary contributors– blossom into what the College has become today.

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Elsayed-Ali said. “In the area of thin filmfabrication and characterization, the expertisethat we have puts us among some of the bestuniversities.”

Also in 2001, Old DominionUniversity launched its forayinto magnetic levitation(maglev) technology, seekingto do research to help turnmaglev technology into a viableoption for mass transit. Inpartnership with a privatecompany, Old DominionUniversity erected a whitetest-track “guideway” oncampus, which runs behindKaufman Hall.

The initial partnership dissolved, but ODUengineering now leads research efforts oncampus into maglev technology. Old Dominionresearchers led by Thomas Alberts, professor ofmechanical and aerospace engineering, reachedan agreement to collaborate with researchers

from the Massachusetts company MagneMotion,Inc. in testing efforts of maglev technologies onthe guideway.

In 2010, MagneMotionreceived a $7.9 million grantfrom the Federal TransitAdministration to test itspatented maglev technologyat Old Dominion. Universityresearchers, along withMagneMotion, installed newtrack on a 150-foot portion ofthe guideway near the Folkes-Stevens Tennis Center atPowhatan Avenue.

The retrofitted trackwill allow MagneMotion to conduct a morecomprehensive test of its maglev vehicle withhelp from Old Dominion researchers.

Not all the initiatives launched by the Collegein the 1990s and early in the 21st century havebeen as successful as the Virginia Modeling,Analysis and Simulation Center, but each foray

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Opposite: ODU was one of several universities who formed aresearch partnership in creating the Applied Research Centerin Newport News in 2001.

Below and right: Research into magnetic levitation technology(maglev) continues, on an elevated guideway that has becomea campus landmark.

In 2010, MagneMotion

received a $7.9 million

grant from the Federal

Transit Administration

to test its patented

maglev technology at

Old Dominion.

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When you go through a fast-food drive-through, at somenewer locations, you pay at the first window, and receiveyour food at the second window.

It’s an innovative efficiency idea, and it was the brain-child of Bill Swart, former dean of the Batten College ofEngineering and Technology.

“I was an industrial engineer at BurgerKing Corporation, and part of my chargewas to increase productivity of BurgerKing restaurants,” said Swart, who was atOld Dominion from 1997 to 2002.

Among the innovations that were broughtto the fast-food industry by Burger Kingduring his time with the company werethe two-window drive-through, and there-location of the drink bar from behindthe counter to where customers could access it. “Thesewere changes designed to re-engineer the fast-foodrestaurant, and they made us more efficient,” Swart said.

When he arrived at Old Dominion University in 1997from the Newark College of Engineering-New JerseyInstitute of Technology, where he was dean, Swart saidhe needed to do some of the same “re-engineering” ofBatten College. There had been tremendous growth inthe previous decade, forays into areas where the Collegehad never been before. But Swart said his charge was tomake the whole thing run a little better.

“There were some good things being done at OldDominion, but it basically needed someone to providea vision and a purpose,” Swart said.

His initial analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunitiesand threats showed Swart that the College of Engineeringwas underplaying its hand, not emphasizing the things itwas doing better than anyone else.

His action plan included continuing the strategic investmentsin the centers that had been launched in the previousfew years, such as the Virginia Modeling, Analysis andSimulation Center in Suffolk.

“This region and this university are full of opportunities ifin fact you take advantage of them,” Swart said. “Themodeling and simulation area was a very strong

opportunity for us, but even though we had VMASC,we didn’t have the academic program.” At the timeSwart was dean, Old Dominion added graduateengineering programs in modeling and simulation.

Old Dominion University also brought its engineeringmanagement education to the UnitedStates Navy, providing a CD-ROM-based master’s degree in engineeringmanagement to senior officers, includingmost of the submarine fleet. “Admiral[Michael] Mullen of the Joint Chiefs ofStaff was one of our graduates,” Swartsaid.

Swart said he’s also proud of the creationof the “Womengineers” program at OldDominion University, to create a college-

wide supportive environment for women to succeed inengineering. Today, Old Dominion has the largestpercentage of female engineering students of any universityin the state.

Swart is currently a professor in the department ofmarketing & supply chain management in EastCarolina’s College of Business. A decade after he leftNorfolk, he takes great pride in helping position OldDominion’s engineering college for greater success inthe years ahead.

“It was an exciting time at Old Dominion,” he said. “It waswonderful to be part of helping create such a dynamic,strong engineering program. It’s not your run-of-the-millprogram. It’s got a proud past and an exciting future.”

Bill Swart: The Efficiency ExpertSwart’s Industry Background Helped aGrowing College Run More Effectively

“This region andthis university arefull of opportunitiesif in fact you takeadvantage of

them.”

CHAPTER 5POSITIONED FOR THE FUTURE

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exploratory projects, and connecting the acquired knowledge withthe capstone projects at the end,” said Oktay Baysal, who was thenserving as the associate dean for academics and research.

“It’s project-based learning – project-focused, team-conducted,leading to learning inside and outside the classroom. The newEngineering Systems Building is designed to support these newcurricular approaches with its project studios.”

Baysal became interim dean of the College after Bill Swart’sdeparture in 2002. A professor and eminent scholar in aerospaceengineering, and an Old Dominion faculty member since 1982, Baysalsought to build on the professional relationships he’d formed with hiscolleagues to clear the way for them and empower them to continue toadvance Old Dominion University through research. “I had been inthe trenches with them,” Baysal said.

“We created a goal-oriented research infrastructure with definedthresholds to spiral up the ladder of recognition,” Baysal said. When aresearch breakthrough shows promise, or an area of regional need isidentified – such as sea level rise or renewable energy – a cluster isformed, open to interested researchers to access in an unstructuredfashion.

“The clusters then provide ideas and recommendations for newpeople to recruit, new programs, research labs, or even institutes,”

Above: Oktay Baysal, dean ofthe college of engineering andtechnology.

Below: A student at the AppliedResearch Center.

As a metropolitan doctoral research university, Old DominionUniversity has tried to serve its community in many ways – throughworld class faculty research, through innovative and engagingteaching, and through partnerships with business, government andits community.

One of six colleges comprising the 25,000-student university, theengineering school envisioned by Lewis Webb – now known as theFrank Batten College of Engineering and Technology – is playingan important role as the university grows in reputation andaccomplishments.

After 50 years, engineering at Old Dominion is worlds removedfrom the instruction given to returning war veterans in tar-papershacks on the field adjacent to Hampton Boulevard. And the futurelooks brighter still.

The naming of the College after Frank Batten, the first rectorof the Old Dominion University Board of Visitors, was seen by manyveteran faculty members as long overdue. Batten, who created themedia company that introduced The Weather Channel to the world,had guided the Norfolk Division’s break from the College of Williamand Mary, and through its first eight years, during which it achieveduniversity status.

Webb was the public face of the campaign to found an engineeringschool in Norfolk, but Batten played a vital role behind the scenes,influencing his friends in government and industry to support thisyoung college’s plan for a top-notch engineering school.

In 2003, he also gave the largest single gift in campus history, $32million, and continued to raise money for the school until his death inSeptember 2009.

In Batten’s obituary in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper, former OldDominion President James L. Bugg said nobody has meant more toOld Dominion than Frank Batten: “In terms of time and talent andmoney and everything else, Old Dominion owes him a tremendousdebt of gratitude.”

By the start of the 21st century, the Engineering College FrankBatten had a hand in creating was taking giant steps.

In 2001, the engineering fundamentals division was created,setting up a curriculum of general courses to help new engineeringstudents learn through projects and “by doing,” a hands-on applicationof engineering principles, rather than just theory. “It inverts theclassical approach – starting the engineering education with

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we had a case where a bright and successful scholarwas reaching a time limit. I suggested establishing anenterprise center for bioelectrics,” Baysal said.

At first, Schoenbach was hesitant. But Baysal said thecreation of the enterprise center allowed him to put moregrant revenue into administrative and support staff.“That very quickly led to more recognition, more peopleand more solutions,” Baysal said.

Prominent local businessman and benefactor FrankReidy was one of those who became very interested inthe work being done at Old Dominion. His support ofthe initiative helped shape what is ultimately known asthe Frank Reidy Center for Bioelectrics.

Old Dominion researchers were gaining prominencefor their work combining high-voltage electricity andbiology, something Schoenbach, a physicist, couldn’thave imagined doing. “Not in my lifetime,” he said.“I thought it was an exciting field, and a good field,because it uses technology to help society in positiveways. But any research area where two disciplines meetis typically where the new inventions are made, wherenew things can be created.”

Schoenbach and Laroussi were both identified in 2001by BusinessWeek magazine as experts in the emergingfields of bioelectrics and cold plasma. In 2006, Laroussiunveiled his plasma “pencil,” a hand-held device thatemits a colored stream of plasma gel shown to kill germswithout harming human tissue. Laroussi, director of OldDominion University’s Laser and Plasma EngineeringInstitute, is now researching the use of cold plasma tokill human leukemia cells.

The Reidy Center has exploded in size, having grown tomore than 50 employees, and is one of the most prolificcenters on the entire Old Dominion campus in securinggrant funding.

Schoenbach said that wouldn’t have been possiblewithout the support of the university, and people in thecommunity like Frank Reidy. “It’s much easier to stay inthe community where you have a name. So you needpeople who believe in you, and we’ve had that, both atthe university and in the community,” he said.

In 2009, Reidy Center Director Heller, who [while atSouth Florida] was a pioneer in the field of electrogenetherapy, reported safe and effective treatment of skincancer in the first-ever human trial of a gene-transferprocess assisted by short pulses of electricity.

Michael Kong, one of the world’s leading researchersin the biomedical applications of cold atmosphericplasmas, joined the Reidy Center in fall 2012 from

Loughborough University in England. To Heller, eachnew researcher adds a dimension to what the ReidyCenter and Old Dominion can do.

“The potential for this technology is endless,” Heller said.“I’ve said this before and I do believe it: we haven’t evengot into the meat of it yet. There are just so many differentthings that can be done. This is why the expansion is socritical, to bring in some additional people, just to havegood brains to be a part of the conversation. Becauseevery time we talk about something, we come up withanother concept we can do.”

Above: Innovation Research Park @ ODU, home of theFrank Reidy Center for Bioelectrics.

Above: Mounir Laroussi, with his plasma pencil.

Opposite: Karl Schoenbach.

Old Dominion a World LeaderBioelectrics

Could a cure for cancer be hidden somewhere in thelaboratories of Old Dominion University’s Frank ReidyCenter for Bioelectrics?

The world-renowned research centerhas assembled talent from all over theglobe inside Innovation Research Park@ ODU, applying applications ofshort-duration, high-voltage electricityto biological cells, a procedureknown as bioelectrics.

Reidy Center Director Richard Heller,who came to Old Dominion in 2009from the University of South Florida,characterizes the work in this emergingfield as a race. “And there are a lotof people chasing us now, from allover the world,” he added.

Old Dominion emeritus engineeringprofessor Karl Schoenbach was oneof the first researchers in the world torealize this. But the applications forso-called pulsed power technology gofar beyond even what he envisionedwhen he became interested in the fieldmore than 40 years ago in Germany.

Schoenbach came to Old Dominion University in 1985,when the military was still the primary user of pulsedpower applications, also known as plasma physics. Thedecline of military research expenditures with the end of

the Cold War, however, meant that bright researchminds like Schoenbach needed to find other applications

for the technology.

“It was in the early 1990s that therewas a time when new ideas poppedup,” Schoenbach said. “We wonderedif it was possible to escape from arelatively narrow range of pulsedpower applications, into commercialapplications, into medical applications.We had at that time all the expertise,all the systems we needed to test newconcepts. I said, ‘Let’s try it.’”

Schoenbach’s first project was donein collaboration with the College ofSciences, using pulsed power to preventbiological pollutants from spreadingfrom the ballast water of containerships. That led to further experimentsinvolving water treatment and thesuppression of certain bacteria.

But it was Schoenbach’s partnershipwith researchers from Eastern VirginiaMedical School, including StephenBeebe and Michael Stacey, who areboth now at the Reidy Center, that

demonstrated for the first time the incredible potential ofthe technology for human health.

With little funding, the researchers applied the millionth-of-a-second pulses of high-power electricity to mammaliancells, and found some startling effects. “We found out wecan kill cancer cells. So this was the beginning,” he said.

A grant from the U.S. Air Force helped Old Dominionexpand the field and bring other researchers toNorfolk, including Mounir Laroussi from the Universityof Tennessee. It also helped Old Dominion host the firstworldwide bioelectrics conference in 1999. More than100 researchers attended.

Then, in 2002, Old Dominion was named the leaduniversity on a $5 million Multi-University ResearchInitiative Grant, which allowed for collaborations withother institutions in Germany, Japan and across theUnited States.

ODU engineering Dean Oktay Baysal said Schoenbachmentioned at a meeting he was having trouble keepingup with the demand of his many research grants. “Here

With little funding,the researchers

applied the millionth-of-a-second pulses ofhigh-power electricityto mammalian cells,and found somestartling effects.“We found out wecan kill cancer cells.

So this wasthe beginning,”Schoenbach said.

engineering’s annual expenses comes from tuition and the stateappropriation,” Baysal said.

That has proved to be a formula for success.

Karl Schoenbach, professor and eminent scholar of electricalengineering, received a $5 million Multi-University ResearchInitiative Grant in 2002, which allowed for collaborations with otheruniversities in the new research field of bioelectrics.

Local businessman Frank Reidy was so impressed with the potentialof the research in many fields that he donated the money to start whathas become the Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics. Tenyears after its formation, the Reidy Center is a world leader.

Having started one of the first engineering management programsin the country in 1987, the Batten College quickly forged strong linkswith all the military branches, whose local commanders quickly sawvalue in the graduate engineering courses oXered by Old Dominion,and the innovative ways they could be delivered.

A program to provide an engineering management master’sdegree via CD-ROM to officers in the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleetwas an instant, runaway success, enrolling more than 250 submarineoWcers within a few years.

Chuck Keating, an engineering management professor at OldDominion, had made his own connections with military operations,doing grant-funded research in the emerging field of system ofsystems engineering.

In 2001, after the attacks of September 11 made evident the needfor greater understanding of the complex workings of interconnectedengineering networks, Old Dominion University created the NationalCenters for System of Systems Engineering (NCSoSE). With Keatingas director of NCSoSE since its inception, Old Dominion facultyresearchers have provided vital research in complex system governanceto military and government operations, and have helped train the nextgeneration of system of systems engineers.

In the realm of keeping America safe, ODU engineering has alsoinvested in complex vision and video research. Vijay Asari, whocame to Old Dominion in 2000 as an associate professor in electricaland computer engineering, spent the next three years developing acomputer-based facial image detection and recognition system.

Asari’s research, funded by the Department of Defense andDepartment of Homeland Security, helped lead to the creation of theComputational Intelligence and Machine Vision Laboratory (VisionLab). Now under the direction of Professor Khan Iftekharuddin, whocame to Old Dominion in 2011, the Vision Lab focuses on developingnew algorithms for real-time applications of machine vision technology,

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Baysal said. “We seek to leverage opportunities, or seek the shouldersof the giants that we can rise above.”

Some institutes can grow to become a center of the BattenCollege. When a center is deemed to benefit the disciplines outsideengineering, it “graduates,” Baysal said, becoming a university-widecenter, or even a state-wide entity.

“We provide more revenue-sharing opportunities to empowerthe directors,” Baysal said. “This is the model we have employed forsuccesses for the ODU Business Gateway, Virginia Modeling, Analysisand Simulation Center, and the now-state-run Mid-Atlantic RegionalSpaceport, overseen by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.”

Old Dominion University continued to experience a difficultfinancial climate. Baysal said the College was asked several years ina row to cut its already slim operating budget. “It was time to thinkof diXerent and bolder models to replace the disappearing state dollars,”he said. “The solution was clear: more sponsored programs throughcompetitively earned external funds, contract education throughasynchronous distance learning, and development through philanthropy.”

The College endowment is 13 times larger than it was in 2002, nowaround $30 million. That has allowed nine internationally recognizedscholars to be recruited into newly established endowed professorships,and means a larger percentage of recruitment costs and salary ofpermanent faculty and staff comes from non-state and non-tuitionfunds. “In fact, less than one-half of the funds supporting ODU

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Below: Lee Belfore leads a tour ofthe Virginia Modeling, Analysis andSimulation Center

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Baysal said the College’s reputation has helped attractscholars from all over the world to Old DominionUniversity. “Our faculty hails from 18 different countries,”he said. “Our already diverse body ofstudents is exposed every day toglobal engineering perspectives.”

All of the Turkish faculty membersmention, though, that it’s nice tohave colleagues who share commonexperiences. “Sometimes we speakin our own language. We share aculture. It’s fun to catch up onthings,” Beskok said.

“It really is unique that there are somany of us. It’s a shared bond, andhelps connect us personally, as wellas professionally,” ResitUnal added.

A soccer fanatic, Akan keeps hiscolleagues up to date on the goings-on in Turkish soccer. When Istanbul-based team Galatasaray marched tothe UEFA Cup championship in 2000,the atmosphere in a small corner ofthe ODU engineering college wasdownright festive, Baysal said.

ODU engineering’s connection toTurkey has proved to be beneficial, and that’s somethingBaysal is proud of. “As the dean, one of the jobs that Ihave is to build collaborations, build relationships. I dothat. I love doing that,” Baysal said. “You always look atthe possibilities where you would have an advantage.”

Through academic and family links in his native Turkey –Baysal’s father was an industrialist and forged strongconnections to government, military and industry –

Baysal helped set up a program tooffer advanced engineering degreesfrom Old Dominion to members ofthe Turkish Air Force.

The program has resulted in 50 activeduty members of the Turkish AirForce earning master’s and doctoralengineering degrees from ODU overthe past seven years.

“Why should they be talking to us asopposed to another university? Well,I share culture, I share heritage withthese places. If I do that right, hope-fully everyone comes out a winner,”Baysal said. “ODU gets many bright,motivated students paying out-of-state tuition. The Turkish Air Forcegot a very good deal because of thecollaborative nature of the program,offered through the Turkish Air ForceAcademy.

“It’s my job to build relationships. Ido that with NASA, I do that withNewport News Shipbuilding, I do

that with other universities. But I also build relationshipsin Turkey because I have an advantage. For one thing, Ispeak the language.”

ODU engineering’sconnection to Turkeyhas proved to be

beneficial, and that’ssomething Baysalis proud of.“As the dean,

one of the jobs thatI have is to build

collaborations, buildrelationships.

I do that. I love doingthat,” Baysal said.

The Turks

After three days on the road, the very day that OktaBaysal drove into Norfolk in 1982 to start his job as anassistant professor at Old Dominion University, his carwas totaled on Military Highway. “That was the welcometo Norfolk,” he said.

With his belongings strewn all over the road, Baysalcalled the two telephone numbers he had – one formechanical engineering professor Sid Roberts, and theother for a young civil engineering professor namedOsman Akan.

“They both came and helped me,” he said. “I ended upforming a great family relationship with Sid Roberts. Mywife is in his wife’s book club. Osman has become oneof my best friends. He’s a man of huge integrity, andone of the smartest men I’ve ever met.”

He’s also a fellow Turk.

Akan and Baysal started at Old Dominion Universityeight months apart, meeting when they became

colleagues. Another Turkish faculty member, Resit Unal,was hired in 1987 when Old Dominion launched anengineering management program. Unal’s wife, MujdeErten-Unal, a faculty member in civil and environmentalengineering, joined him a few years later.

Now 30 years after Akan and Baysal started, the FrankBatten College of Engineering and Technology has sevenTurkish faculty members. In addition to Akan, Baysal, Unaland Erten-Unal are Ali Beskok, professor and endowedchair in mechanical and aerospace engineering; MecitCetin, associate professor in transportation engineering;and Onur Bilgen, assistant professor in mechanical andaerospace engineering.

The unique aspect to the critical mass of Turks is thatit’s happenstance that they ended up at Old Dominiontogether. “It’s a total coincidence,” said Baysal, who hiredthe three most recent arrivals. “They were all, wheneverwe did the searches, the top choices. We made the rightdecisions. They happened to be Turkish.”

An “Accidental” Pipeline

Opposite: Seven engineeringfaculty members from Turkeycall Old Dominion Universitytheir academic home.

Right: The Turkish faculty(from left) Osman Akan,Mecit Cetin, Resit Unal,Mujde Erten-Unal, OktayBaysal, Ali Beskok andOnur Bilgen.

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and professor of electrical and computer engineering, and ProfessorHelmut Baumgart and Assistant Professor Gon Namkoong, havealso achieved attention for their micro technology and nanotechnologyresearch.

Soon after arriving at Old Dominion University in late 2010,Sylvain Marsillac, associate professor in electrical and computerengineering and a leading researcher in solar (or photovoltaic) energy,began collaborating with Elsayed-Ali, Baumgart and Namkoong. Injust over two years, Marsillac and his colleagues have earned nearly$3 million in grant funding from government sources from the U.S.Department of Energy and other sources.

In the Photovoltaic Laboratory in Kaufman Hall, Marsillac andhis team fabricate solar cells and then test the diXerent materialcompositions for energy eWciency. Marsillac and other photovoltaicenergy researchers around the world are seeking to make the idealsolar cell – one that’s eWcient, lightweight and aXordable. “But itdoesn’t exist yet,” Marsillac said. His research seeks to help move theeWciency and lightweight aspects of solar cells as far along as possible.

“Our goal is to find new materials that can develop higherefficiency by themselves – or new designs, new architecture – thatwill result in higher eWciency,” Marsillac said.

Baysal views the recruitment of Old Dominion engineering facultyby larger institutions as an indicator of success. But the school hasalso worked hard to keep its faculty by providing opportunities thatthe founders of engineering at Old Dominion could scarcely havebelieved were possible.

“Today, we have a much stronger College than only a few years ago,”

Left: The Vision Lab does grant-funded research for the Departmentof Defense, Department of Home-land Security, NASA and otheragencies.

to use in things like surveillance cameras, night-vision technology andmotion sensing.

Ali Beskok, now Batten Endowed Chair in ComputationalEngineering and professor of aerospace engineering, met Baysal as astudent at a fluid dynamics conference in 1991. “He gave a very nicespeech on his research, and we met and we started talking,” Beskoksaid. “Throughout the years, I would see him at conferences; he wouldtell me about his experiences as faculty at ODU.”

Beskok came to Old Dominion from Texas A&M University in2007, and has done award-winning research into microfluidics – thenature of how fluid flows through extremely confined spaces. He wasone of five young researchers who received a $310,000 grant in 2010from the National Science Foundation to purchase a state-of-the-artscanning probe microscope to boost the University’s burgeoningresearch into micro technology and nanotechnology.

Along with Beskok, Shizhi Qian, associate professor of aerospaceengineering; Roland Cooper and David Gauthier, assistant professorsof biological sciences; and Julie Hao, associate professor of mechanicalengineering, were listed on the grant.

Hao is one of several Old Dominion engineering researchers whohave made a very large impact doing research on a very small scale. In2009, she received $500,000 in two grants from the National ScienceFoundation to continue her groundbreaking work with Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), tiny mechanical systems used indevices from telephones to medical equipment.

Old Dominion Engineers at the Applied Research Center inNewport News, including Director Hani Elsayed-Ali, eminent scholar

Above: Sylvain Marsillac, associateprofessor in electrical and computerengineering.

Right: Khan Iftekharuddin and thestaff at the ODU Vision Lab.

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From Zambia to ODU and Back

Many graduates of the Batten College of Engineeringand Technology make their marks within a few miles ofcampus. The Hampton Roads region is chock-full ofengineers – at tiny companies or Fortune 500 firms –proudly hanging their Old Dominion diplomas on thewalls of their offices.

Mfikeyi Makayi is also proud of her Old Dominioneducation. She’s using hers a little further from theNorfolk campus, however.

Mfikeyi is a trailblazer in herhome country of Zambia, battlingagainst stereotypes as an engineerat the Kansanshi Copper & GoldMine. Since 2010 she has workedas a mining engineer in the townof Solwezi, in the northwesternregion of Zambia.

Her duties over the course oftwo years with the company haveincluded supervising constructionprojects and maintenance upgradesin the plant, operating productionand support machinery in themine’s open pit, managing andcoordinating mining operations,and mastering production drillsand blasting techniques.

Makayi is the first female engineerin the history of the giant Zambian mining companyKansanshi Mining PLC, and as such, faces dailychallenges.

But Makayi learned determination and a skill set thatserved her well in her careerwhen she came to studyengineering at Old DominionUniversity in 2002, after beingawarded an InternationalStudent and Scholar Servicesscholarship out of high school.

“My time at ODU forced meto be truly independent,determined and a go-getter,”she said. “I had great professorsand met my best friends at ODU, so the environment Ifound and developed in around Norfolk prepared meadequately to deal with such a demanding job.”

Makayi was born in the Zambian capital of Lusaka,growing up in a household with her parents and threebrothers. Her family instilled a work ethic that she neededwhen she came to the United States, simultaneouslydealing with challenging engineering studies at OldDominion and adjusting to life in a new country.

Makayi graduated in 2007 with a bachelor of science incivil engineering. She remained in the U.S. for another

year, holding two different jobs inVirginia Beach, including her firsthands-on introduction to whatshe would do in her career. “Iventured into the geotechnicalbranch of civil engineering, andthat is a very important branchin mining,” she said. “I didn’tknow I’d end up in mining, butin retrospect, that one year wasa backbone to my step into themining field.”

That step was delayed whenthe world economy sagged in2008, prompting Makayi toreturn to Old Dominion topursue a master’s degree inenvironmental engineering, whichshe received in December 2009.

One of her academic mentors atthe university was Saikou Diallo,

then a doctoral student and now a research assistantprofessor at Old Dominion’s Virginia Modeling, Analysisand Simulation Center.

Diallo, also from the Africancontinent, was impressed withhis young colleague.

“Mfikeyi is a very brightyoung lady whom I met duringher undergraduate studies atODU,” he said. “She has agreat personality to boot.We became fast friends and Ialways enjoyed her sense ofhumor and commitment to

helping others. She is an asset to her family andcommunity and has a great future in this world.”

Now She’s the Boss

Makayi is the first femaleengineer in the history of the

giant Zambianmining company

Kansanshi Mining PLC.

Baysal said. “Just in this decade, we established seven more institutesthat seek solutions to the problems relevant to our region. In fact, theresearch and education in the College addresses problems in 10 of the14 Grand Challenges stated by the National Academy of Engineering.”

The proof is all over the College and the region, from the AppliedResearch Center in Newport News, to VMASC in SuXolk, to a newbiomedical engineering program, a new marine engineering program,and a new practice-oriented professional degree, Doctor of Engineering

The engineering student body, which numbers more than 3,200,is more diverse than ever, and more talented than ever. Femaleenrollment nears 15 percent, and minority enrollment is more thandouble that figure. That makes the Frank Batten College of Engineeringand Technology the most diverse, most gender-balanced engineeringschool in the state.

Old Dominion also has the largest percentage of in-state studentsof any Virginia university, Students like Calvin Whealton, whograduated with a bachelor of science in civil engineering in 2011 and isnow working on his doctorate in environmental and water resourcessystems at Cornell University, are reflective of ODU engineering’stalented graduates. Whealton didn’t realize everything that OldDominion oXered until he attended school here.

Below: Team Tidewater, a group ofOld Dominion University/HamptonUniversity students who participatedin the 2011 Solar Decathlon.

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the structure and moving it back and forth fromWashington, D.C. for competition on a tight schedule.

“We built a core team of really dedicated and hard-working students and community volunteers who wereable to accomplish these objectives in addition to theiracademic and work responsibilities,” Whitelawsaid. “This kind of project-basedlearning was a great introductionto the challenges of real-worldengineering work, teaching us aboutprofessional collaboration, clientrelations, budgeting and resourceallocation, the rigors of a design-build schedule, cost-benefit analysisand more.”

Old Dominion’s Mujde Erten-Unal,the project’s principal investigatorand associate professor of civil andenvironmental engineering, andStella Bondi, assistant professor ofengineering technology, along withHampton University architectureprofessors Mason Andrews andDavid Peronnet, were the facultyadvisors for the project.

Key Old Dominion student workers for Team Tidewaterincluded Jodi Knorowski, Holly-Ann Hillard, JoshuaDavis, Ann Hageman, Christopher May, John Purdue,Wayne Laustsen, Hamami Youssef and Kevin Brinker.

More important than the ranking in the Solar Decathlon,the Unit 6 Unplugged design and engineering of their

prototype net-zero energy unit fits the local Norfolkarchitecture, performs well, and could be imitated ata relatively low cost in the area. “It showed that theconcept of multi-family, net-zero housing could beapplied both practically and elegantly in HamptonRoads,” Whitelaw said.

Since finishing his first SolarDecathlon, Whitelaw has continued towork toward his Ph.D. in environmentalengineering, with a focus on tech-nologies that facilitate sustainabledesign.

The collaboration between OldDominion and Hampton Universitycontinues, as the two schoolswill partner for the 2013 SolarDecathlon in Irvine, California with anentry for vision-impaired residentsknown as The Canopy House. AndSolar Decathlon faculty advisors Erten-Unal and Andrews are continuing tolead an effort to get the Unit 6Unplugged “six-pack” designapartment buildings constructed inNorfolk.

“The six-pack project is very dear to my heart, as thelogical culmination of the 2011 Solar Decathlon, where weshowed how net-zero energy, multi-family housing might bedone in Hampton Roads at an affordable cost,” Whitelawsaid. “I see it as a great way for the two universities tohave a positive impact on their local communities.”

It started with a chance meeting at an environmentalconference.

Almost two years later, a team of engineering studentsfrom Old Dominion University stood shoulder to shoulderwith architecture students from Hampton University in aworldwide competition, showing off their environmentalengineering and design skills in building a home for theU.S. Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon.

The ODU/HU team, known as Team Tidewater, wasselected as one of 20 finalists for Solar Decathlon,along with college and university teams from Belgium,China and across North America. It was a whirlwindexperience for the team of 90 architecture and engineeringstudents from the two schools.

The home design, Unit 6 Unplugged, was conceived in adesign studio just south of the ODU campus. It was builtthrough the spring and summer of 2011 on a patch ofland across the street from the Old Dominion UniversityStudent Recreation Center.

A few weeks before the competition, the home was brokendown, loaded onto flatbed trucks, shipped to Washington,D.C. and then reassembled at West Potomac Park, ashort walk from the White House.

For the 12 days of the Solar Decathlon, Unit 6 Unplugged

– an innovative, affordable, urban infill apartment unit –saw visitors from around the world. In fact, the team’snext-door neighbor on the Solar Decathlon site was ateam from New Zealand.

The competition was based on 10 tests of energyperformance in the homes, and judged by Departmentof Energy-selected jurors. Jurors chose the University ofMaryland’s innovative WaterShed design as the winner.Team Tidewater finished a credible 14th in the globalcompetition.

Some team members moved on during the two yearsthat the Solar Decathlon team worked together, or joinedthe effort late in the process. But project engineer andproject manager, John Whitelaw, a doctoral environmentalengineering student during that time, was a constantpresence.

In addition to understanding the technical side of thehouse’s systems, Whitelaw had to facilitate cooperationbetween the student team and faculty members at twouniversities, along with business development, buildingcode considerations, sub-contractor relations and evenhow to secure the home as Hurricane Irene took aim atthe Old Dominion campus.

On top of the design and construction, the team had towork out the logistics of disassembling and reassembling

ODU Engineering Students Step OntoInternational Stage

Solar Decathlon

Left and opposite: Thesolar-powered home,designed and built byTeam Tidewater, wasassembled on the ODUcampus, then takendown and trucked toWashington, D.C., whereit was reassembled in aweek for the SolarDecathlon finals.

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Above: A dune buggy designed forthe Society of Automotive Engineers“Baja” racer competition.

Below and opposite: Work beingconducted at Sylvain Marsillac'sPhotovoltaic Laboratory.

architect claimed in USA Today that Unit 6 Unplugged was “by farmy favorite design.”

Team Tidewater finished a credible 14th place in the globalcompetition ranking in the top 10 in seven of the categories. The twoschools have qualified for the 2013 Solar Decathlon finals in Irvine,California, with a new design entitled Canopy House.

Resit Unal, chair of Old Dominion’s engineering management andsystems engineering department, said the engineering students whotook part in the Solar Decathlon were “a credit to the entire university.”Unal personally contributed to the effort – he barely saw his wife,Mujde Erten-Unal, associate professor of civil and environmentalengineering and faculty leader for Solar Decathlon, in the monthsleading up to the competition.

Campus life has changed for faculty and students in many ways inthe past 50 years, and perhaps through no greater way than in thecreation of an on-campus population of students. Thirty years ago,Old Dominion University had fewer than 1,000 residence beds. Now,there are almost 5,000, and another 2,000 students live within a mileof campus.

“I used to come here Saturdays to work, because the campus wasdeserted,” said Bob Ash, professor and eminent scholar of mechanicaland aerospace engineering and a veteran of the Batten College. “Now,during football season, I can’t even ride my bike because the campus isjust filled.”

The 2009 re-launch of Old Dominion’s football team has grown theprofile of the entire university, and further boosted the sense of campus

“Most people I meet only know ODU through the basketball orfootball teams, if at all. I try to communicate the excellent educationODU provided by the quality of my work,” Whealton said. “Theprinciples ODU taught me are the foundation to my current success,and if I had to make the choice again, I would not change to any more‘prestigious’ institution.”

Old Dominion students can compete. Old Dominion engineeringstudents have participated in national and international competitions.Students have designed dune buggies for the Society of AutomotiveEngineers “Baja” racer competition, and remote-controlled helicoptersfor the International Aerial Robotics Competition. Old Dominionengineering students have participated in more lighthearted andphilanthropic competitions as well, including the annual Duct TapeRegatta to benefit the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, theCanStruction Competition to benefit the Foodbank of SoutheasternVirginia, and Red Bull Flugtag 2011, a contest for which mechanicalengineering students constructed an aerodynamic oWce desk.

Competing in the 2011 Solar Decathlon presented Old Dominionengineering students a new platform on which to bolster their bonafides. A dedicated group of civil and environmental engineering studentsteamed up with a group of architecture students from HamptonUniversity in the Department of Energy-sponsored competition whichasks collegiate teams to design and build net-zero energy homes.

Team Tidewater, as the collective became known, worked for nearlytwo years on Unit 6 Unplugged, an urban infill housing apartmentblock as aesthetically pleasing as it was energy eWcient. At the 2011Solar Decathlon finals in Washington, D.C., a writer and professional

community. Even skeptics once concerned about the cost of starting afootball program now rave about the exposure the football Monarchshave brought Old Dominion University. Engineering faculty membersnote with pride that star quarterback Taylor Heinicke is a student inthe Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology.

Football has become such a boon to the University, that at the fall2012 Homecoming game, ODU engineering sponsored a tailgate partyon Kaufman Mall in front of the engineering building. The graduatesreturning to campus scarcely recognized the place.

“This is just phenomenal,” said Oscar Gomiez, as he looked aroundKaufman Mall with his wife and two of his five children. The 1997mechanical engineering graduate, who earned his master of science inaerospace engineering from Old Dominion in 1999, said the diXerencein a decade in his alma mater was hard to fathom. “The dorms lookdiXerent. The grounds look diXerent. There are more buildings. Thebuzz is there,” he said.

John Temple, a 1981 mechanical engineering graduate who hasworked at Dominion Virginia Power since leaving Old Dominion,was attending his first football game on campus that day. “It’s justwonderful. I’m glad the school has done so well in many ways. I cameback here three years ago and couldn’t find Kaufman Mall, the campushad grown so much,” Temple said.

Even more illustrative are the words of long-time faculty members.Each had their own story of the school’s modest beginnings, and theirown way of expressing pride in what Batten College has grown into.

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Below: Mounir Laroussi’s plasmapencil has shown promise at usingcold plasma to kill leukemia cells.

Old Dominion University was supposed to be a short careerdetour. Oktay Baysal planned to use his doctoral degree for afew years at Old Dominion, then go back to the Gulf Coast tojoin the family steel trading business.

“I wanted to come and stay maybe a coupleof years, do some research with NASA.That’s every Ph.D. engineer’s dream. The planwas not to stay in academia,” Baysal said.The dream of working at NASA turned out tobe simply too good to leave for Baysal, nowin his 30th year at Old Dominion, and in hiseighth year as dean of the Frank Batten Col-lege of Engineering and Technology.

“NASA made the difference,” he said. “It’sjust an unbelievable place. When you’reworking on things that you could only dreamabout, designing things like rockets, whenyou see that you are working on hypersonicairplanes, flying many times the speed ofsound, these are things that you don’t do atany other school.”

Baysal could do all of that only 22 milesfrom his front door. “NASA Langley was anabsolutely wonderful place to go to workevery day,” he said.

Baysal’s research helped him advance quicklyat Old Dominion, becoming a full professorat age 38, and an eminent scholar at 41.

The campus Baysal arrived to from LouisianaState University, where he did his doctorate,was very small. It was also modestly equipped. “There werejust ridiculously small computers. I was doing computationaldesign, and needed massive parallel computers. There was nosuch thing here,” Baysal said. “But I did see the desire of theuniversity to excel, to get better. That was obvious.”

And the burgeoning partnership with NASA, started morethan a decade earlier, was an obvious strength of the youngengineering school.

“It not only transformed me, it transformed the university,”Baysal said. “I would say half of the faculty, we were atNASA. The reason that we came here was for NASA. It reallybrought and kept good faculty. We could see the opportunitythat we had here. This is like the Mecca, the Who’s Who inaerospace research; they come to spend some time here.”

By the late 1980s, when he was considering academic offersfrom other universities, Baysal felt the momentum spreadingacross the entire engineering college. The departments of thecollege were not only growing their own research, they wereseeking out partnerships across and outside the university.

“The concept of not only departments, but also centers forresearch and economic development, was really important,”Baysal said. “Those were very entrepreneurial, and very muchengaging with your own community and your own research.That was the beginning of what today, the entire university

has realized. Now, it is becoming a lot morethan just offering degrees.”

Baysal became acting dean in 2002, whenBill Swart left for East Carolina University.Jim Cross, who was dean himself from1984 to 1997 and an aerospace engineeringcolleague, said Baysal has done a very goodjob connecting with his faculty, particularlyfellow foreigners. Baysal moved to the UnitedStates in 1978 after studying in England,and is originally from Turkey.

The benefit he had in taking the dean’s jobis that Baysal “grew up with” many of hiscurrent faculty professionally. “That gave mea huge advantage,” he said. “They were mycolleagues; they were not my faculty as adean. In fact, some of them were my rolemodels when I came here as an assistantprofessor at the age of 28.

“I learned many things from them. I Iearnedwho they are, I learned what they like. Ilearned what they didn’t like.”

By acting as a servant leader for hiscolleagues, Baysal said that has allowedthem to shine, and collectively bring OldDominion engineering more and more

accomplishments. “Your duty in my position is have the visionto point them in the right direction, then get out of the waywhen they are progressing to great things.”

Oktay Baysal: The Steady HandOffering Leadership to Old Dominion University

“When you’reworking on thingsthat you could onlydream about,designing thingslike rockets, whenyou see that youare working onhypersonic

airplanes, flyingmany times thespeed of sound,

these are things thatyou don’t do at anyother school.”

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“This is truly a national-caliber research engineering college,”Ash said.

“It’s been a fun 30-plus years at ODU,” said Alok Verma, RayFerrari Professor of engineering technology, and director of OldDominion’s Lean Institute. “I’ve seen this university grow from a smallinstitution to a well-known university. I think we can really build thispipeline for a skilled workforce, and improve the productivity of theUnited States economy.”

Where does the school go from here?

A growth spurt is possible, as Batten College moves into its50,000-square-foot Engineering Systems Building, which will featurea state-of-the-art clean room, a lasers lab, a plasma science lab andstudio space where students can collaborate on research projects.Baysal said that will help accelerate ODU engineering’s learn bydiscovery motto even more.

Gary Schafran, chair of civil and environmental engineering, hopesthat Batten College doubles in size. “I mean, it certainly is justifiableby the region that we’re in. We’re in a major metropolitan area.Engineering is important for economic development,” he said.

Growth, change and new advances are something Baysal guaranteeswill happen with the Batten College.

“We’re builders,” Baysal said. “We’re not about just sustainingsomething. We have a very proud past, but I believe we also have avery bright future.”

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SEPTEMBER 1931l Following anagreement between the presidentsof William and Mary and VirginiaPolytechnic Institute (now VirginiaTech), engineering classes are offeredin Norfolk for the first time. VPI studentsfrom Hampton Roads can do their firsttwo years of engineering education athome, before finishing their degree inBlacksburg, Virginia.

AUGUST 1932l Two youngengineering master’s graduates at VPI,Lewis Webb and Edward White, aredispatched to their home town ofNorfolk to teach at this new engineeringschool. Both men would stay on campusfor the next 40 years.

OCTOBER 1939l A Civilian PilotTraining (CPT) program is created atthe Norfolk Division in October 1939by the Civil Aviation Authority. Part ofAmerica’s national defense plan, theCPT offered four full college credits inaeronautics and helped prepare thenation for eventual war.

FEBRUARY 1941l The federalDepartment of Education selects theNorfolk Division of VPI as one of thesites for its Engineering Defense TrainingProgram. The program, conducted byengineering schools throughout theUnited States, taught courses likeexplosives production and engineeringprinciples of aircraft.

SPRING 1946l The hands-on skillstaught during World War II were indemand after the war’s end, leadingto the creation of the Norfolk Divisionof the William and Mary TechnicalInstitute, initially operating in makeshiftclassrooms under the grandstands atForeman Field.

APRIL 1959l The Technical Institutemoves into new headquarters acrossHampton Boulevard from the ODUcampus. The building was hailed bythe Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch and Staras “the finest technical school in thevicinity, tailor-made to turn outtechnicians in specialized areas.”

JANUARY 1961l Eight yearsafter the introduction of the first four-year degrees offered entirely at theNorfolk Division, President LewisWebb raised the idea of an engineeringschool in Norfolk to the state Legislature.The idea was opposed by the state’stwo existing engineering schools, theUniversity of Virginia and VPI.

1962l Three out-of-state engineeringdeans join representatives from OldDominion, University of Virginia andVPI on the panel deciding whetherto grant a third engineering schoolfor the state. The three out-of-staterepresentatives unanimously recommendan engineering school for HamptonRoads. The Virginia General Assemblyagrees, and authorizes its creation.The formal relationship with VPI endsin September 1963.

AUGUST 1962l J. Harold Lampedelays his retirement and moves toNorfolk from North Carolina State,becoming the first Dean of the Schoolof Engineering.

APRIL 29-30 & MAY 1, 1965lKaufman Hall, the new engineeringbuilding at Old Dominion, opens in athree-day ceremony. Governor AlbertisS. Harrison, who spoke on the firstnight of dedication, declared thebuilding was a tangible sign that “thenext century in America belongs to theSouth.”

JULY 1966l Ralph Rotty, ofTulane University, becomes the seconddean of the Old Dominion School ofEngineering, after Lampe’s retirement.

APRIL 1968l Gene Goglia, chairof Old Dominion’s thermal engineeringdepartment, is awarded a grant of$213,800 to conduct summer researchinstitutes at NASA’s Langley ResearchCenter. This is the first grant in asuccessful partnership that has lastedalmost 50 years.

SEPTEMBER 1969l Old Dominionjoins with other Virginia universitiesin forming the Virginia AssociatedResearch Campus (VARC) in Hampton,a graduate program in engineeringcreated to provide skilled professionalsto NASA, the Army research center atFort Eustis and Newport News ShipBuilding and Dry Dock.

AUGUST 1971l The EngineeringLaboratory Building, eventually namedDuckworth Hall, is opened, adjacent toKaufman Hall on the University mall.

SEPTEMBER 1971l Twelve monthsafter absorbing the former TechnicalInstitute, the Old Dominion UniversitySchool of Engineering is approved bythe State Council for Higher Educationto start the first four-year engineeringtechnology programs in the state.

FEBRUARY 1972l The firstEngineering Open House is held.The doors of Kaufman Hall and whatwould become Duckworth Hall areopened to teachers, schoolchildren,and the community.

JULY 1974l John Weese, from theUniversity of Denver, is hired as the thirdfull-time dean of the Old DominionUniversity School of Engineering.

APRIL 1975 l The School ofEngineering sponsors its first “Womenin Engineering” conference, designedto inform female high school studentsof opportunities in engineering.

OCTOBER 1981 l ODUresearchers led by G. Marshall Molen,associate professor of electricalengineering, receive a grant of$613,079 from the U.S. Navy, thelargest non-NASA grant ever receivedby the School of Engineering.

AUGUST 1984l Jim Cross arrivesin Norfolk from Texas A&M University,as the fourth dean of the College ofEngineering.

NOVEMBER 1984l Old DominionUniversity sets up its EngineeringClinic, an operation designed to matchup companies needing help with theCollege’s engineering expertise.

JULY 1987l Larry Richards andResit Unal create one of the country’sfirst engineering management programsat Old Dominion University.

Look at us now. To think it all started in the oldLarchmont Elementary School building on HamptonBoulevard in 1931.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the FrankBatten College of Engineering and Technology, hereare 50 notable milestones in the College’s history.Thanks to the diligence and passion of the faculty,staff and students of the Batten College, there arethousands more, and they happen every day.

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OCTOBER 1994l The Departmentof Defense’s Joint Training, Analysisand Simulation Center (JTASC) ischarged with developing the capacityto conduct joint simulation trainingexercises. After meeting with seniorOld Dominion University officials,JTASC and the College of Engineeringand Technology begin work on a jointproposal for ODU to be the academiclead for the initiative.

JULY 1995 l The VirginiaCommercial Space Flight Authority isfounded to manage the Wallops IslandNASA launch facility, now known asthe Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.ODU Engineering ManagementProfessor Billie Reed is named executivedirector, a position he holds untilNovember 2012.

AUGUST 1996l ODU’s College ofEngineering and Technology signs anagreement with NASA Langley to takeover operation of the Langley Full-ScaleTunnel, a giant wind tunnel facility thathad been shuttered by NASA a yearearlier.

SEPTEMBER 1996l After OldDominion University had underwrittenthe initial funding for the creation of amodeling and simulation academicprogram, ODU’s Virginia Modeling,Analysis and Simulation Center beginsoperating in the Tidewater CommunityCollege building in Portsmouth.

NOVEMBER 1996l Environmentalengineering student Samantha Salviabecomes Old Dominion University’sfirst (and still only) Rhodes Scholar.

JULY 1997l Bill Swart comes toOld Dominion University from theNewark College of Engineering – NewJersey Institute of Technology, as the fifthdean of the College of Engineeringand Technology.

AUGUST 1998l Nine studentsbegin a course of study in OldDominion University’s newly createdmaster’s program in modeling andsimulation engineering.

JANUARY 1999lW. ChanningBlackwell, a civil engineering student,becomes the first undergraduatestudent in Virginia history to earn aU.S. patent.

JUNE 1999 l Old DominionUniversity hosts the first academicconference in the world in the emergingfield of bioelectrics. Researchers fromaround the globe come to Norfolk.

JULY 2000lWith a three-yeargrant from the Department of Defenseand Department of Homeland Security,Vijay Asari begins work on a computer-based facial image detection andrecognition system, which will becomethe ODU Vision Lab.

MARCH 2001l The Center forAdvanced Engineering Environments(CAEE) is founded under the directionof Ahmed K. Noor, Lobeck Chair andEminent Scholar of Modeling, Simulationand Visualization. The center developsinnovative technologies, strategies andapproaches for advanced learningenvironments and networks.

MAY 2001l Four universities opena research partnership in NewportNews known as the Applied ResearchCenter, housing scientists and inventorsfrom Old Dominion University,Christopher Newport University, theCollege of William and Mary, andNorfolk State University, along with theJefferson Lab.

JULY 2001l ODU pioneers aprogram with the U.S. Navy nuclearsubmarine fleet, providing officers withan opportunity to earn a master’sdegree in engineering managementon CD-ROM. More than 250 navalofficers sign up for the program in thefirst three years.

AUGUST 2001l Old DominionUniversity launches its foray intomagnetic levitation (maglev) technology,erecting a white test-track “guideway”on campus, partially running behindKaufman Hall.

NOVEMBER 2001l Following theattacks of September 11, the BattenCollege creates the National Centerfor System of Systems Engineering, tohelp provide solutions to increasinglycomplex interdisciplinary engineeringquestions for government and militaryagencies.

NOVEMBER 2001l Oktay Baysal,professor and eminent scholar ofaerospace engineering, is namedinterim dean. In 2004, he would benamed the sixth dean of the BattenCollege of Engineering and Technology.

AUGUST 2002l Old DominionUniversity forms its Frank Reidy Centerfor Bioelectrics, after being named thelead institution on a $5 million Multi-University Research Initiative Grant,thanks to support from Reidy, a localbusinessman.

FEBRUARY 2003l A replica of theWright brothers’ first plane, the WrightFlyer, is brought to the Langley Full-Scale Tunnel to be wind tested beforere-enacting the historic first flight formankind on December 17, 2003.

JANUARY 2004l The LeanInstitute is created in 2004, as adivision of the College’s Departmentof Engineering Technology, to aidcompanies in the transition to leanmanufacturing techniques, and traineducators in the discipline.

MAY 2004l The Frank BattenCollege of Engineering and Technologycreates the Virginia Applied Technologyand Professional Development Center,a further evolution of the formerEngineering Clinic, to do a full rangeof services, from outreach to schools,to grant procurement for militaryveterans.

JUNE 2004l Old DominionUniversity’s E.V. Williams Engineeringand Computational Sciences Buildingopens, becoming the first LEED-certifiedbuilding on a higher education campusin Virginia.

NOVEMBER 2007l The newheadquarters of the Virginia Modeling,Analysis and Simulation Center, alongwith the ODU Tri-Cities Center, opensin Suffolk.

JANUARY 2010l ODU beginsoffering an undergraduate degree inmodeling, simulation and visualizationengineering, becoming the firstuniversity in the United States to offera complete post-secondary educationin modeling and simulation, fromundergraduate through post-doctoral.

JANUARY 2010 l Magneticlevitation technology companyMagneMotion receives a $7.9 milliongrant from the Federal TransitAdministration to test its patentedmaglev technology at ODU. The ODUresearchers, along with MMI, beginplans to install new track on a portionof the guideway, completing that workin 2012.

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MAY 2010l The ODU BusinessGateway is launched, expandingthe scope of the Virginia AppliedTechnology and ProfessionalDevelopment Center to encompassthe entirety of the University’sresources, acting as a one-stop shopfor companies, government agenciesand military organizations seekingODU’s research and managementexpertise.

OCTOBER 2011l Team Tidewater,a team of engineering students from OldDominion University and architecturestudents from Hampton University,compete in the Department of EnergySolar Decathlon finals in Washington,D.C.

JULY 2012l Sylvain Marsillac,associate professor of electrical andcomputer engineering, opens hisPhotovoltaics Laboratory, putting plansinto action to erect solar panels on theroof of Kaufman Hall.

OCTOBER 2012l At a ceremonymarking the kick-off for the Collegeof Engineering’s 50th anniversarycelebration, ground is broken for theBatten College’s Engineering SystemsBuilding, which will be the mostmodern engineering building in thestate when it opens in 2014.

Opposite: Engineering students BrittanyGarman and Fred Hughes.

Acknowledgments

This is dedicated to every person who has had a hand in buildingthe Batten College of Engineering and Technology from the groundup. It was created in spite of resistance, built without resources,and has grown to be a vital part of Old Dominion University andthe Hampton Roads community. It’s an honor to tell this story.

Thank you to a number of people who have helped in thecreation of this book. Thank you to the three dozen current andformer faculty and staX members who graciously provided their

time and memories.

Thank you to Sonia Yaco, Special Collections Librarian at theODU Archives, for her eagerness to help and for her excitement

about the project. Thanks to Kristyn Danson, of the Batten Collegeof Engineering and Technology, for her expertise and support.

Thank you to Dean Baysal for coming up with the idea to publisha book on the College history and for providing the funds to

make it happen.

Thank you as well to others who have helped the project,including but not limited to Stacey Nixon, Fred Butler, Brittany

Garman, Chuck Thomas, and especially Linda Lauby ofOuter Banks Press. Her optimism and energy helped make

this very worthwhile project possible.

– Brendan O’Hallarn

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Old Dominion University is Virginia’s forward-focused

metropolitan research university for students

who want rigorous academics

and an energetic residential community.

ODU’s nationally recognized faculty

use real-world expertise

and award-winning teaching

to challenge students to achieve their highest goals.

The university’s engaging and relevant

learning opportunities

teach skills for personal and professional success.

With a determined entrepreneurial approach

that drives research and collaboration with business,

the university contributes nearly $1 billion annually

to the local economy.