At the heart of Oregon State University’s pursuit of excellence are faculty — scholars and educators who advance knowledge while teaching, challenging, and guiding students. These are the individuals in whom Oregon State’s mission lives and breathes.
Named faculty positions bring resources and prestige to Oregon State, allowing the university to recruit and retain the world’s foremost experts. The additional resources help build excellent programs and inspire faculty and the students around to thrive. In short, named faculty positions raise the university to a higher level of excellence.
Boeing Professor in Mechanical Engineering Design, Bryony DuPont
The Boeing Company has long supported higher education in the belief that the quality of its employees’ education has a direct impact upon the quality of the company’s products and services. Boeing and the OSU College of Engineering enjoy a close, long-term relationship. Many OSU graduates have made their careers at Boeing, several rising to senior positions.
In 1992, the Boeing Company earned the double distinction of becoming the first corporation to endow a position at Oregon State University, and making the first gift to endow a professorship in the College of Engineering.
Thanks to the Boeing commitment, OSU is strengthening its work in integrated design and manufacturing — areas critical for future competitive product development and the training of future generations of students in this field.
The Boeing Professorship of Mechanical Engineering Design is held by an outstanding specialist in design engineering whose duties include teaching undergraduate and graduate students, developing new courses in design engineering, and working to maintain and enhance the strong relationship between industry and OSU’s manufacturing engineering program.
Boeing Professors are selected on the basis of criteria established jointly by Boeing and OSU, and must be recognized leaders in design that requires advanced manufacturing and supporting methodologies.
Tom and Carmen West Faculty Scholar, Karl Haapala
Tom West received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Tennessee, and taught at both Georgia Tech and Tennessee before earning his doctorate from Oregon State University in 1976 and joining its faculty. While at OSU, he served the College of Engineering as the head of the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department, associate dean, and interim dean.
West helped modernize Oregon State’s curriculum via the establishment of its manufacturing engineering and MECOP programs, and he authored two classic texts in engineering economics with Jim Riggs. Among other activities, he served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, on the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, and as a member of the committee that established the current ABET 2000 criteria by which all engineering programs are now evaluated.
West is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and a member of the College of Fellows for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He has been recognized as a National Society of Professional Engineers Outstanding Engineering Professor and as Oregon Industrial Engineer of the Year.
In 2012 West and his wife, Carmen, who worked in Hewlett-Packard management for many years, established the West Faculty Scholar endowment to continue to enhance OSU’s industrial and manufacturing engineering programs.
College of Engineering Dean’s Professor, Julie Tucker
In 2016 the OSU Foundation received a $1 million gift from an anonymous donor to be used for professorships in the College of Engineering. The only stipulation with this remarkable gift was that it support male and female faculty equally.
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