Thayer School
A. Wayne Givens TT'61: "I have been with the Eastman Kodak Company since 1963 and have been doing production supervision. Recently my family and I moved to Colorado where I was involved in the design and setting up of a new manufacturing plant for the Eastman Kodak Company in Windsor.
"Professor Taylor's teachings have been very beneficial. Whenever I consider the rate of return on purchasing a piece of equipment I think of his Engineering Economics course.
"During the summer of 1964 Professor Taylor was kind enough to ask me to assist in one of his summer seminars. 1 certainly enjoyed doing that and gained a lot from working closely with him."
Dr. Usamah Abdus-Samad MrE'68 presented a paper at the recent Highway Research Board meeting in Washington, D.C., entitled, "Predicting Park-and-Ride Parking Demand." Parking facilities supplied by 73 railroads and 20 bus facilities were studied and generalized in a prediction equation developed by linear regression analysis. Usamah is a consulting engineer and a prospective bridegroom in Beirut, Lebanon. The übiquitous Prof. Joe Wattleworth CE'60 of the University of Florida was on discussion panels for three sessions of this meeting.
Lt. Jim Becker Jr. BE'70: "I have been on active duty in the Air Force as pilot serving in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S.
"During this time I kept working on an aircraft navigation instrument which was the subject of my BE thesis. I applied for a patent on the device which I expect to be granted soon.
"After coming off active duty in the fall of '73 I plan to come back for the Tuck-Thayer program leading to the MBA and MrE degrees."
Dr. John Fondahl CE'48, who served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific during WW II, is professor civil engineering at Stanford. John has written A Non-Computer Approach to theCritical Path Method for the Construction Industry, which has world-wide distribution.
His current research is in advanced network techniques which include time-cost trade-offs, resource allocation and leveling, and multi-project scheduling.
Horace "Ace" Taylor EE'55, is with the Range Measurement Laboratory at the Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. Before aerospace funds were cut he was chief of the Communications Engineering and Implementation Branch supervising 13 people, including three engineers.
George S. Pinkham BE'70, completed his M.S.E.E. at Stanford and is now enrolled in the Law School there.
Bill Scollard EE'48: In a reorganization of the manufacturing group within Ford Motor Company's North American Automotive Operations, Bill has come up as general manager of the new casting division which includes all casting operations and supporting activities formerly in the engine and foundry division. He has an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Dan L. Lindsley CE'17: "I believe I'm the only man to graduate from Thayer without ever taking chemistry. Astronomy was another prerequisite course I had not taken, but dear old Bobbie Fletcher gave me and a few other classmates a cram course in it and we managed to pass. Somehow my chemistry deficiency was overlooked.
"During World War I I was a flying cadet in the Signal Corps of the Army. I have been in the field of wood preservation all my life; I retired in 1958."
Loren A. Jacobson D'60: "In June '71 I was reassigned from the Air Force Materials Laboratory, where I was involved in metallurgical research on high strength structural alloys of aluminum and titanium. I am now at Aerospace Research Laboratories, also at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where I am the deputy director of the Metallurgy and Ceramics Research Laboratory. In addition to administration, I have some time to continue investigations into the relations between the micro-structure and mechanical properties of high strength aluminum alloys. This assignment will probably be of three to four years' duration. After that I expect to be assigned to some other laboratory post in research administration or to a staff position in the Washington, D.C., area. I am approaching the midpoint in my Air Force active duty career.
"I have devoted a great amount of non-professional time to singing; first in various church affairs, and most recently in opera. Last sprina I had a most unusual opportunity for an amateur to sing the role of 'Leporello' in 'Don Giovanni' by Mozart. One month later I sang the role of 'Don Alfonso' in 'Cosi Fan Tutte,' also by Mozart, in a civic opera company in nearby Springfield, Ohio. I plan to continue voice studies along with opera and oratorio singing, but at present I have no definite future performance plans."
Dr. Neil E. Greene Mech.E.'60: We've recently welcomed a set of twins to the family which has necessitated a certain rescheduling of time.
"Let me brief you concerning my wanderings since leaving Thayer School. I left Hanover for a teaching assignment at N.C. State College, where I had the good fortune of being able to teach and study in that mysterious area of heat transfer. I'll never forget my first class meeting - baptism by fire.
"I had a chance meeting with the M.E. Department Head at Michigan and the result was that I was accepted for graduate work at Michigan under the Ford Foundation Faculty Development Program. I opted for a NASA-sponsored experimental thesis dealing with solid-liquid-vapor phase equilibrium in mixtures of helium and hydrogen. This led to my being named one of eight outstanding graduate students for the year.
"I soon decided that if I really wanted to be an effective teacher 1 had better get some industrial experience. So, for the past five years I've been associated with research and development at Owens-Corning Fiberglas, in Granville, Ohio. After some initial stumbling, I organized and planned an extensive long-range research effort directed toward mathematically modelling the continuous glass filament-forming process dealing primarily with heat transfer and fluid mechanics.
"In the course of this project, I've done some work at M.I.T. Part of this resulted in a doctoral thesis which won for me the ASME Melville Award for the outstanding fluid mechanics paper of the year."
Kenneth E. Johansen Mech.E'62: "I remember building and testing a pistonless internal combustion water pump with Dave Smith and RogerMcArt for our mechanical engineering project which we thought could be built simply and economically for under-developed countries. We finally got a pipe-fitted version of it set up and operating in the Thayer basement late one evening. The discharge pipe was led outside the window and pointed upward toward Tuck Drive. I guess we surprised quite a few people, including a motorcyclist, who had to pass through what looked to them like a cloudburst on that clear beautiful May night when this odd contraption also surprised us with its powerful throw of water." (Ken is plant manager for the Folding Carton Plant of the Federal Paper Co. in Thomaston, Ga.)
Gleanings from a recent Thayer alumniquestionnaire:
A Thayer grad's response to the question, What can you do?' is often 'What's your problem?' "
"It's too expensive to go to Thayer. I came to Dartmouth before World War I with a suitcase, an umbrella, and $300 to pay all expenses for the year ..."
Elaborate mathematical derivations have been least helpful to me."
I was not stronger technically than many engineers but I know I was better educated in general."
I hope that the Thayer luxuries of small size, informality, and excellent faculty can survive the economic pressures."
"You ask, 'Would you send your son or daughter to Thayer?' Who 'sends' offspring anywhere these days!"
