Eventually realized that I needed to be somewhere where I can do my own thing, and I realized teaching was it. So I went to the Mechanical Engineering Department at NC State and got my Ph.D. in ’90. I made a decision that I wanted to be a teacher instead of a researcher and stayed on to teach. I just love teaching. That was the right place for me as a teacher. I taught every undergraduate course for sophomore year and junior year: statics, dynamics, solids, fluids, thermo I and II, heat transfer, machine design, and dynamics of machines. All of the basic courses that are part of the DTC courses. I’ve taught all of those many, many times.

A couple of years after receiving my PhD, I was selected to be part of a major NSF grant involving 8 universities to look at how undergraduate engineering could be improved. As part of that involvement, it became clear that one important metric of the success of engineering programs was the percentage of graduates that had passed the FE Exam in their senior year. NC State was 3rd in that metric, primary because we did not have a senior FE review course. The 2 universities ahead of us in the ranking did. To make a long story short, because I was already involved in teaching in a review program for NCDOT employees looking to pass the FE Exam, the current Dean of Engineering asked me to develop a senior course for NC State. I did just that, creating what is still an active course, E 490. I consider E 490 one of my most rewarding accomplishments.