Faculty, industrial experience

Hire new faculty who have industrial experience or give newly hired faculty a year in industry to gain the experience before they begin teaching. 

Recruit senior faculty with significant industry experience to teach and mentor other faculty or attract practicing engineers from industry to spend time teaching at the university. 

Theoretical studies counted for much more than practice-oriented testing projects pubUshed papers and grants replaced patents and industrial experience as measures of good faculty. By the mid-1960s, the transition to an analytical and more scientific style was largely completed at most American engineering colleges [6]. 

On July 1, 1935 John Leighton Bray, the faculty member with the longest tenure, was appointed to succeed Peffer as the second Head of the School. Bray had joined the School in 1923 with only a B.S. from MIT (1912) but with significant industrial experience which included several years as a mining engineer in Chile, Honduras, Canada (British Columbia) and USA (New York). 

Much less has been said about the benefits of industrial cooperation for the engineering education at universities. Engineering teachers are not always aware of the rapid changes in industry. An active participation in industrial cooperation will facilitate for them to keep abreast of these changes and is therefore another element of the lifelong learning for a professional teacher. This is particularly true for those who lack a personal first-hand industrial experience. Universities should also eiKX)urage and facilitate its faculty members to spend time in industry as a natural part of their career plan. 

He created the precedent that talented MIT faculty and students should and could go into industry, simultaneously applying their learning and providing valuable experience for MIT. 

I would like to say that I think we in universities can leam from some of the things that you said. When I went to the University of California, I went to a new-faculty orientation program that they had. I had never had an orientation at any of the other places that I had worked in government, industry, or universities. I had about 15 years experience by that time. 

Brace Lester, Ph. D., has more than 20 years of research experience in biological and biomedical research working in both industry and academic environments. In conjunction with several other faculty members at the University of Minnesota, he founded Knowledge Frontiers, which specializes in technology assessment and scientific due diligence. Over the years. Dr. Lester has been involved in studying the role of G-proteins in the adhesion, motility and invasion of metastatic cancer cells. 

Susan Rutledge, adjunct faculty member at Southeast Community College, very ably served as project assistant throughout. In this role, she researched and field tested experiments, developed and maintained a directory of chemical technology faculty members nationwide, created a valuable index for the American Chemical Society s (ACS) Voluntary Industry Standards document, and cheerfully accepted and accomplished many a menial task for the good of the project. She deserves much credit. 

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