The Formative Years and Settlement in Grissom Hall

The School of Industrial Engineering and Management which had been organized in 1955, was to have a very short life. Weller found himself in a difficult position, serving as head of two departments and reporting to two deans. An offer to become dean of the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania gave him some ammunition for action. He bypassed Deans Hawkins and Ayres and went directly to President Hovde. As reported in Robert Topping's The Hovde Years, Weller sai d to Hovde, "What I really want to be is to be dean of a School of Industrial Management at Purdue University." Hovde backed Weller and the School of Industrial Management was created in 1958 with Weller as dean. As a result, the School of Industrial Engi neering and Management was abolished and the Department of Industrial Engineering become separate department in the Schools of Engineering with Amrine continuing as head. Then in 1961, following graduation of the first class in Industrial Engineering in 1 960, Industrial Engineering gained school status.

In the middle and late 50's, relationships between the faculty and the students in Industrial Engineering were strengthened by the establishment of student chapters of the American Society of Tool Engineers (later the Society of Manufacturing Engineers ) in 1955, the American Institute of Industrial Engineers in 1958, and Alpha Pi Mu (Honorary Society) in 1959. (See list of charter members of Alpha Pi Mu in Table 5 in the Appendix) Each of these chapters would contain many outstanding students and perfo rm valuable services over the years.

Another milestone was reached in 1958 with the initiation of the Cooperative Education Program in Industrial Engineering. Although the size of the Program has tended to vacillate depending on industry's demand for engineers, many students have benefite d from the cooperative form of education and many point with pride to their status as Co-op graduates.

While several students had received Ph.D.'s in the field of industrial engineering from Purdue University as early as 1949, the Ph.D. program was not formally approved by the Graduate School until 1959. Prior to 1959 the Ph.D. was granted on "so-called " experimental basis; that is, students were registered for research under a "blanket" graduate school course. Although chilled by Dean Young about operating a program under false pretenses, Amrine had been reluctant to request approval of the Ph.D. until there were several members on the faculty with doctorates. By 1959 the department had the necessary courses and credentials to request approval of the program and was in a position to offer all degrees from the Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineeri ng to the Doctor of Philosophy.

In 1959, the graduate program in industrial engineering recognized five field of study:

James W. Barany,who eventually became associate head of the School of Industrial Engineering, was appointed to the staff in 1958. In the following year (1959), George H. Brooks, from the DuPont Company, and Vernon W. Hoeche, from a high school in Illi nois, were employed. Amrine served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Melbourne in Australia that year and Hewitt Young was acting head during his absence.

Efforts were continued to secure staff specialists to teach the new courses in the undergraduate program and to introduce new graduate-level courses. The four-semester sequence in industrial engineering analysis and design and the courses in statistica l control, quantitative methods, and systems analysis posed particular challenges. Several of the systems analysis posed particular challenges. Several of the new courses necessitated laboratory facilities and there was an urgency to establish the laborat ories before the initial offering of the courses. In 1959, for example, Hewitt Young, as acting head, worked tirelessly to equip an instrumentation and control laboratory in old Heavilon Hall. The faculty at this time also left that it was imperative that the new curriculum should contain instruction in digital and analog computers and the rudiments of operations research. Fortunately, Industrial Engineering was able to take advantage of an IBM 1620 computer that had been secured by Aeronautical Engineer ing and Engineering Sciences, and all industrial engineering students were able to gain familiarity with both digital and analog computers.

Interest in the new evolving area of operations research was also being expressed in those years by a number of academic departments at Purdue e.g. Statistics, Psychology, Agricultural Economics, Industrial Management. After a series of informal meetin gs and one well delineated plan of action, however, the Industrial Engineering faculty decided to assume a leadership role and include operations research as an important segment in the industrial engineering program. It was this decision that led to the hiring, in 1957, of Paul H. Randolph, who had helped to introduce this area of instructions at Illinois Institute of Technology. It also led the appointment of Ferdinand F. Leimkuhler in 1961. Leimkuhler, who had previously had been employed by Du Pont, w as just completing his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. He soon became one of the pillars of strength on the faculty and in 1969 succeeded Amrine as head of the School.

In the 1961 academic review, President Hovde, Dean Hawkins, and other top administrators were advised that the faculty of Industrial Engineering planned to move counter to the national trend and try to increase its strength in the area of materials pro cessing (manufacturing engineering). As a follow-up on this, in the 1962 academic review, Amrine pointed out that the department proposed to increase the staff in manufacturing engineering, human factors, and systems and controls. This decision met with t he approval of the administration and Industrial Engineering was given the "green light" to proceed.

In keeping with the aforementioned decision to enhance the manufacturing engineering area, a recruiting program was initiated in 1962 to find a strong person in the materials processing area. This led to the employment of Dr. Moshe M. Barash in 1963. B arash had been serving on the faculty of the University of Manchester in England and had compiled an outstanding record in both research and scholarship. He continued his exceptional record in the years that followed and was named Ransburg Professor of Ma nufacturing in 1982. Richard Adams, who had had many years of manufacturing management experience at the General Electric Company elsewhere, joined the manufacturing engineering faculty in 1965; and a few years later, in 1967, Dr. Y.U. El Gomayel, who had earned his Ph.D. at Purdue, was appointed. Thus, in a span of only four years, the faculty in manufacturing engineering was enlarged and strengthened.

Changes were taking place in the Department of Technical and Applied Arts as well to update courses and laboratories and to keep abreast of the industrial arts and other requirements. These efforts were continued under the able direction of Denver Sams until the Department of Technical and Applied Arts was separated from Industrial Engineering in 1964 and became a part of the new School of Technology. Sams was deservedly recognized for his efforts and his administrative talents and became associate dea n of that school.

Following the admission of the first undergraduate students in 1957, there was continuous growth in the enrollment as indicated in Table 1. June 1960 marked another significant milestone when 13 students received their B.S.I.E. degrees (two additional students graduated in August 1960).

Frequent changes in the curriculum were necessary to overcome apparent course weakness, to eliminate compulsory military training (in 1965), to adhere to the Schools of Engineering policies, to reduce graduation requirements, and to achieve greater stu dent flexibility. This pattern was one that was to continue throughout the 1957 to 1985 period.

The strength of the faculty and the graduate program in Industrial Engineering was evident in the dissemination of its research findings. As reported in 1962 academic review, Purdue staff members and their graduate students had more papers published in Journal of Industrial Engineering during the period of 1957 to 1960 than did the staffs of any other university. In addition, they published many papers in other technical journals.

Amrine was asked in 1962to serve for a brief period as interim head of the School of Electrical Engineering, and in 1966 was selected to be a fellow in the American Institute of Industrial Engineers.

A few outstanding attainments of the industrial engineering students over these years included the Iron Key Award to William Etter in 1960 and the selection of John L. Nicklas as the recipient of the first Alpha Pi Mu Outstanding Senior Award in 1961. (See the list of other recipients in Table 6 in the Appendix)

Nineteen sixty-three marked the close of many years of dedicated service of two long-time staff members: Halsey F. Owen, who retired after 25 years of service, and "Tony" Vellinger, after 48 years of service; and for Richard Patterson, a skilled member of the service staff. In that same year, Thomas E. Bartlett resigned to join a consulting firm in California and was replaced by Robert D. Davis, an outstanding Ph.D. candidate from Northwestern University; George Brooks left to work on his Ph.D. at Geor gia Institute of Technology and did not return to Purdue.

Prior to and throughout the formative years, one of Amrine goals was to try to reduce teaching loads enable the staff to have more time to pursue research and other scholarly activities. He made some progress in this direction, but one of the continuin g obstacles to achieving his goal was the difficulty in securing outside research funds. Thus, the department was limited in its ability to support graduate students, to establish better research laboratories, and to finance research time for faculty.

A special kind of recognition came to one of the Ph.D. recipients in 1964 when Dr. Robert N. Lehrer, head of the School of Industrial Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, was selected to receive the Purdue Schools of Engineering's Distinguis hed Engineering Alumnus Award. Lehrer was the first of a number of industrial engineering alumni to be so honored. (See Table 17 in the Appendix)

Following the requests from a number of industrial engineers in Indianapolis, a mater's program in industrial operations was initiated in 1964. The courses were taught primarily on the IUPUI campus by faculty members from the main campus in West Lafaye tte. This program attracted a number of students and led to the granting of the first degree in 1969. A unique summer graduate program was initiated in 1965 for the Western Electric Company. This program, which was to continue over the years, grew out of the efforts of James W. Barany and enabled a number of the company's engineers to work towards master's degrees by spending several weeks on the campus each summer.

The minor remodeling of old Heavilon Hall had been only a temporary expedient for the space needs of Industrial Engineering. When the three-story front of old Heavilon Hall was demolished in 1956 to create a new Heavilon Hall, Industrial Engineering su ffered a further lost of space. (The rear, laboratory portion of old Heavilon Hall continued to stand until 1969) Fortunately, the completion of a new Civil Engineering building on Stadium Mall in 1964 made it possible to remodel the old Civil Engineering building (adjacent to Heavilon Hall) in order to house Industrial Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, and the Soil Mechanics staff of Civil Engineering. The original part of the building was in such a bad shape that it had to be rebuilt from the insid e out, but the results were quite impressive. It was a happy day in 1967 when the IE staff members were able to move into their new offices, resplendent with new furniture, and to take advantage of the new Aeronautical Engineering and Industrial Engineeri ng Library and the Methods Engineering, Systems, and Controls, and Plant Layout Laboratories. There was some debate about naming the building but the untimely, accidental death of two Purdue's astronauts, Roger B. Chaffee and Virgil I. Grissom, prompted t he Board of Trustees to name two of Purdue's building after them. Thus, the old Civil Engineering building was renamed Grissom Hall and a lighted photograph of Grissom attired in his space suit was placed inside the west entrance of the building.

A problem in operating a strong engineering department in a university like Purdue is the continual attempts by other institutions and industry to attract the well-known members of the faculty. In the 1960's, several outstanding members of the faculty resigned to accept positions elsewhere. Hewitt H. Young became head of Industrial Engineering at Arizona State University in 1967; John A. Ritchey left in 1968 to join Stanford Research Institute; and Robert D. Davis also left in 1968 to join the faculty at University of Massachusetts. There were also shifts within the University: Paul H. Randolph transferred to the Statistics Department in 1961, Richard W. McDowell went to the Freshmen Engineering Department in 1962 (where he subsequently became associat e head), and Clyde P. Smith went to Freshman Engineering in 1972.

Fortunately, a number of good people were attracted to Purdue as well. Rudell Reed, Jr., who had had extensive industrial and teaching experience and had just completed his Ph.D. degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology, accepted a position at Pur due in 1963. He was highly qualified in plan layout and materials handling and soon acquired a national reputation in his field. Colin L. Moodie, who had received his Ph.D. from Purdue and was on the faculty at the University of Florida, joined the Purdue faculty in 1964 and teamed with Greene in providing expertise in the production control area. Norman R. Baker, who had just completed his doctorate at Northwestern University, was added to the operations research group in 1965; and James R. Buck, who had been at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, was appointed in engineering economics and also in the human factors area. In 1967, Y.I. El Gomayel, from Egypt, was appointed to the manufacturing engineering area, and Thomas W. Hill, Jr., a doctoral candid ate in Arizona State University, joined the operations research group. Phillip Reed, a doctoral candidate from Georgia Tech, was appointed in 1968 to assist in the production systems and management areas. Arunachalam "Ravi" Ravindran, who had just complet ed his doctorate at the University of California, was appointed in 1969. "Ravi" soon became a "star" in the area of operations research (particularly linear programming).

It would be remiss at this juncture not to mention several key clerical, service, and administrative staff members who performed so valiantly during the formative years. Emma Gunkle, secretary to the head, served as a "one woman gang" in handling the b usiness and fiscal matters in the department; Glen Davis did an expert job of supervising the service staff in the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory; Elbert L. Patton was of tremendous assistance in establishing the initial laboratories and serving as building deputy in Grissom Hall; Joyce Hinds (who joined us fresh out of high school) brought great secretarial expertise to her work; and Florence Norman was invaluable in maintaining student records and assisting students. Except for Joyce Hinds who con tinues on the staff as the office manager, all of these staff members retired prior to 1985, including Leslie A. Walter, a highly competent machinist on the service staff, who retired in 1965.