A young H. Fort Flowers, BE’12, MS’15 (left), with his three-wheeled Motorette and friend Sam Hunt (leaning on seat) in downtown Nashville.

Some philanthropic families put their names on buildings. Others endow chairs. Still others choose to create scholarships. Rarely does one family do all three—but the Flowers are no ordinary family when it comes to supporting Vanderbilt.

For more than a century, members of the Flowers family have attended and supported the Vanderbilt School of Engineering. It started with H. Fort Flowers, a young man from a farm in Adairville, Ky.

Flowers was born in 1887 as the last of seven children and attended a one-room schoolhouse. In the early years of the 20th century, he graduated at 15 and moved to Nashville to live with an aunt. He apprenticed with Nashville’s Tennessee Central Railroad locomotive shop for nearly four years. H. Fort’s son, Daniel Flowers, G’49, picks up the story from there.

“At the end of the apprenticeship, my father entered Vanderbilt to be trained as an engineer,” Dan says. “I don’t know if there were scholarships back then, but Vanderbilt found him a job teaching machine shop [then part of the engineering school]. He was invited to join a fraternity—Phi Kappa Psi—and that gave him lots of contacts he would use in the future.”

After graduating in 1912, H. Fort headed to New York City and a job with Otis Elevator as a draftsman.

“It was while working in New York and living at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at Columbia University that he met—at a fraternity convention—the chief engineer of Cleveland Electric Power,” Dan says. “That gentleman told my father that he needed a special kind of railroad car. My father sketched one out on the spot. The man from Cleveland Electric told my father that if he could build it, Cleveland Electric would buy it.”

Railway Car Magnate

The design H. Fort roughed out that day was for a street railway dump car that unloaded bulk material from the side. H. Fort turned to the Nashville Bridge Company to build it and within five months, he delivered the first car. While it was being constructed, he completed requirements for a Vanderbilt graduate degree in mechanical engineering. It was 1915 and the Differential Steel Car Company was born.

Many railway cars, as well as mine cars and trucks and more than 80 patents later, H. Fort decided that it was time to give back to the school that had given him so much.

“My father had a good reason for supporting Vanderbilt—because Vanderbilt supported him,” Dan says.

In 1969, the highly successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer funded the H. Fort Flowers Graduate Wing of the Heard Libraries. Of no less significance was that he encouraged his children and grandchildren to follow in his philanthropic footsteps.

“The family has gone in and continued to support Vanderbilt,” Dan says. “We owe a great deal to Vanderbilt and we have a duty to keep that up.”

In 1980, H. Fort’s children, Daniel, Barbara, Joan, Sara and Fred, G’72, created the H. Fort Flowers Endowment Fund at the School of Engineering. It funds the H. Fort Flowers Chair in Mechanical Engineering, first awarded in 1990 to Thomas A. Cruse. Today the chair is held by Michael Goldfarb, H. Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, who is doing breakthrough development of robotic artificial legs and arms for amputees.

By 2011, the fund had grown in value and a second endowed chair was created. The second chair is named for H. Fort’s late son-in-law, John R. Murray Sr., also an engineer. The John R. Murray Sr. Chair in Engineering is held by Sankaran Mahadevan. H. Fort’s grandson, Joseph Flowers, BE’88, explains why these chairs would’ve meant so much to his grandfather.

“After my grandfather passed away in 1975, there was an interest in putting together a way to honor him at the school,” Joseph says. “The idea was to focus on teaching, particularly on the teaching of design. He always felt it was important to push design and to encourage new thinking and creativity—especially as the world became more compartmentalized.”

Buildings to Chairs to Scholarships

Joseph and his wife, Lori Manix Flowers, BA’88, took the family’s giving in a new direction in 2003 when they endowed the Joseph and Lori Flowers Scholarship in the School of Engineering.

“When I was at Vanderbilt, I was lucky enough to receive a General Motors scholarship during my junior and senior years,” Joseph says. “The sense of freedom that came with it was really nice. It’s great to share that freedom with other students and help them concentrate on their work and not worry about the financial stuff.”

Lori says she hopes the scholarship helps students make the decision to come to the School of Engineering. “I like to think that we’re helping students go where they truly want to go and not just where they can afford,” she says.

It’s remarkable to consider that the Flowers family has been part of Vanderbilt for more than 100 years—especially as the School of Engineering celebrates its 125th anniversary. The family has supported virtually every area of the school and Vanderbilt as a whole—from buildings to teaching to scholarships. Members of the Flowers family have been involved at a variety of levels, providing time, gifts, expertise, guidance and support, as well as graduating several generations of alumni.

“With a quality institution, you have to support the infrastructure and promote the quality of the students,” Joseph says. “Otherwise, the legacy can’t continue. My parents and my grandparents have a history of supporting Vanderbilt. Without people like them, it would be a different place.”

Who better than engineers to know that teamwork is key to successful problem solving? There’s no better demonstration of teamwork than the way alumni, donors, parents, faculty, staff and friends of Vanderbilt University worked together to achieve ambitious goals for the recent Shape the Future campaign. The campaign, which launched in 2003, has concluded and we’re honored and proud to announce that Vanderbilt—and the School of Engineering—successfully raised more than $1.9 billion in a historic initiative focused on investing in people, primarily through scholarships and endowed faculty chairs.

What a Remarkable Achievement—and We Thank You

Thank you from the engineering students who will receive scholarships, allowing them to attend one of the nation’s top research universities and graduate without crushing student debt.

Thank you from the outstanding professors who will use endowed chairs to fund vital research, support teams of brilliant graduate students assisting in new findings, and equip labs with specialized equipment needed to seek new solutions.

Thank you from the faculty and staff who come to work each day energized by the prospect of transferring knowledge and furthering discoveries.

Thank you from parents and grandparents, whose bright young engineering students will thrive in pursuit of knowledge.

Thank you from the administration, those dedicated to being good stewards of the financial contributions entrusted to them for today’s and future generations.

That fiscal stewardship involves continuing to build scholarship funds for Vanderbilt’s need-based undergraduate scholarship endowment, Opportunity Vanderbilt. While we achieved Opportunity Vanderbilt’s initial endowment goals, more funding is needed to sustain expanded aid and ensure tomorrow’s talented students can choose Vanderbilt.
 

Need for Scholarship Funds Continues

Currently, more than 61 percent of undergraduates receive financial aid, so it is vital that the scholarship endowment continues to increase. For the 2011-12 year, Vanderbilt has set a goal of raising $20 million in funds for the Opportunity Vanderbilt scholarship initiative. With your support and the support of others committed to assuring that young engineers succeed, the School of Engineering will help meet that goal and continue shaping the future of engineering at Vanderbilt and in society.

Picture the Results Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56 (left), endowed the Casson Family Scholarship in Engineering. M. Douglas LeVan, J. Lawrence Wilson Professor of Engineering (center), holds the J. Lawrence Wilson Chair in Engineering honoring Lawrence Wilson, BE’58, and Barbara Wilson, BA’58. Gabriella DiCarlo, Class of 2013 (right), is the inaugural recipient of the Smith Seckman Reid Engineering Scholarship, established in 2003 by Smith Seckman Reid Inc. and its employees who are alumni of the School of Engineering.

Pictures he took while traveling hang in Gerry Hull’s den. “Seeing some of those pictures bring back the trip—the people I met, the sights, the sounds, the smells,” he says. “I try to come back with two or three shots that are worth looking at from time to time.”

How I got into the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering as a freshman is still a mystery. The filtering process at the admissions office was not as good as it is today, of course, but the standards were reasonably high even in 1959. My SATs were fine but my high school record of achievement was extraordinarily unimpressive. All my energy had gone into my automobile—a highly polished, lightning-fast, chromium-plated beauty. The younger kids marveled as I drove by. I thought I was king.

When I arrived on the Vanderbilt campus from Georgia, it was without my highly polished suit of armor—we were not allowed to bring our automobiles. It would not have made much difference anyway, because the values of my classmates had moved on. I went abruptly from being ruling monarch of my tiny kingdom to the lowliest serf in a bigger world. It is what happens when you are a couple of years behind the curve, out of step and unprepared.

I did not adjust well to my new environment. I was lost. Daniel Boone was once asked if he had ever been lost. He answered, “I can’t say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.” I can attest that I was bewildered once for four years at Vanderbilt.

Socially, I faked it the best I could. Some of my classmates went along with me, but my professors were not fooled, of course. It is difficult to fake thermodynamics. I did find some of the courses on mechanics quite interesting, and on occasion, I actually applied myself. History and English, on the other hand, were, I thought, a complete waste of my valuable time. I expressed my disdain by flunking them, only to have to take the courses again. My approach was highly inefficient.

I actually loved the School of Engineering and identified with it, but forward progress at that time was in slow motion and difficult, like in a bad dream. A quote by E. B. White (paraphrased) helps explain the awkwardness of the time—“When one simultaneously wants to graduate and have one helluva good time and enjoy one’s personal hobbies, it makes it difficult to plan the day.” I had difficulty planning the day. Priority was not yet a meaningful concept in my development.

It is true. A professor actually stopped me in the hall one day and asked, “Why are you here?” I was speechless. I had no answer. I kept showing up though—in spite of myself—and graduated in 1964 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

A Continuing Process

A university can do just so much. I find it remarkable that there is such a great chasm between the relatively sound judgment of a mature 19-year-old, as an example, and the incredibly poor judgment of an immature 19-year-old. (I represented the latter, in case you have not already figured that out.) But it is far more relevant to understand that immaturity at a young age does not mean immaturity for life. It is true the maturation process can be, and I hope is, a continuing process for life. A desire to understand, a willingness to put your ego aside and make corrections, along with a failure or two and a couple of hard knocks, can do wonders.

I enjoy coming back to the reunions at Vanderbilt from time to time. It is an opportunity to see old friends, of course, but also to show that I did grow up, I am normal, and I can converse in complete sentences.

So why do I think so highly of Vanderbilt today and choose to give back now that I can? It’s not a mystery. I always loved Vanderbilt and what it stands for. I had great respect for my professors even when they saw straight through me. I came up short; the university did not.

GKW

Before I came to Vanderbilt, I had learned about giving back. My grandfather was successful in the corporate world and made cash donations to individuals in need from time to time. My grandmother balanced the family checkbook and when she found a disbursement that was unexplained, she had a pretty good idea what it was about. She noted in the margin “GKW,” which stood for God Knows What.

When I started a charitable foundation, initially with funds left by my grandfather many years ago, I called it the GKW Foundation. It seemed an appropriate way to carry on the tradition. Since then it has gotten more specific. A fund to assist teachers with travel and research grants during their summer months is called the God Knows Where Fund. A scholarship for a School of Engineering student is the GKW Scholarship, but maybe should be the God Knows Who Fund. Each student who receives it has the potential and opportunity to do God Knows What with his or her education, career, life, dreams. That’s exciting to me. And it’s fun.

And giving should be fun, don’t you agree?

Gerry Hull, BE’64, is the former CEO of Automated Logic Corporation of Kennesaw, Ga. He says he has always reserved time from his corporate management duties to work hands-on with engineering design projects, which he so enjoys, and he holds a number of patents. Hull is a longtime supporter of the School of Engineering and serves on a variety of community boards. In keeping with the GKW giving philosophy, Hull made possible the construction of Jacobs Believed in Me Auditorium in Featheringill Hall as a tribute to legendary former professor Dillard Jacobs. Gerry Hull was inducted into the School of Engineering’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 2004. He and his wife, Patricia, live in Atlanta.

Sam McCleskey, BE’51, lives by the motto, “Learn, earn, return.”

Learn, earn, return. Civil engineer Sam McCleskey, BE’51, has made that phrase his philosophy for every stage of his adult life. That dictum, combined with McCleskey’s success, has in turn made an enduring difference in the lives of students in the School of Engineering.

McCleskey began the learn phase of his adult life when he arrived at Vanderbilt’s campus in 1947 from Memphis, Tenn. McCleskey and 2,499 other recipients nationwide had been selected out of 50,000 applicants to receive Naval ROTC scholarships. “It was an immense honor,” McCleskey says. He would not have been able to attend the School of Engineering without the aid, he says.

The scholarship paid for his tuition and books, and allotted him $50 in spending money each month. “My scholarship required that I take 15 hours each semester as well as three hours of naval courses,” McCleskey says. “It was a challenging four years, but well worth it.”

Earn

Within two days of graduating with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, McCleskey obtained his naval commission and married Arden Keillor. McCleskey served in the Navy for three years and with the Army Corps of Engineers before returning to Memphis to follow in his father’s footsteps by working as a surveyor.

In 1956 he went to work for Gulf Oil Co. as a construction engineer in Louisiana. A few years later, he was hired as vice president of construction for J.C. Milne Co., an Oregon-based company that specialized in building mausoleums.

“After learning the industry of mausoleum construction and the principles of business, I started the McCleskey Construction Company in 1961,” McCleskey says. He simultaneously opened an architectural engineering division, MCF Architects.

Over the next decades, McCleskey built a business that combined engineering, design and customer service. Applying engineering know-how to considerations for structural design, environmental and climatic conditions, local development codes and material durability and maintenance, McCleskey Construction soon served clients from coast to coast. Sam McCleskey served on the boards of directors of the Georgia Cemetery Association, the Southern Cemetery Association and the National Association of Cemeteries. Today, he is one of only six people inducted into the Suppliers Hall of Fame for the cemetery and funeral industry, and his Atlanta-based mausoleum and memorialization company is now celebrating its 50th year in business. In 2007, he was named a member of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni.

Return

Twelve years ago, Sam and his wife, Arden, established the McCleskey Honor Scholarship to support exceptional undergraduate engineering students who otherwise might not have the means to attend VUSE. “The scholarship benefits well-rounded individuals who demonstrate broad-based interests. This was created to help students in much the same position I was in when I entered Vanderbilt,” McCleskey says. “I am appreciative of my opportunity and felt an obligation to return it.”

One of the first recipients was Jordan Winston, BE’02. “The scholarship served as motivation, as I knew I had to maintain a high GPA to keep the scholarship. I ended up graduating summa cum laude with a double major in biomedical and electrical engineering,” Winston says. That high GPA and his engineering background helped Winston get into medical school.

The scholarship also pushes students to reach their full potential and receive a quality education. “The McCleskey Honor Scholarship was a huge blessing for me,” says Lauren Shepherd, BE’05. “Not only was I appreciative of the recognition for my hard work and commitment to academic excellence, but also the financial aid from the scholarship meant that I could focus my attention more fully on my education. The financial burden eased by the scholarship directly impacted the freedom I felt to devote myself completely to my studies.”

Scholars’ Turn to Learn, Earn and Return

McCleskey believes that now, more than ever, a Vanderbilt education is crucial. “With the global population expanding, the next generation of engineers will inherit a unique set of problems,” the veteran entrepreneur says. He advises current students to learn as much as they can. “It will be up to you to solve these problems.”

McCleskey with former scholar JoAnna Todd Anderson, BE’05

McCleskey’s former scholars are doing their parts. Physician Winston is finishing up his training as a hospitalist. Derek Detring, BE’05, has started an energy advisory firm in Houston.
“When I received the McCleskey scholarship, it reinforced that a good work ethic and a good attitude are not only appreciated, but also rewarded in the ‘real world’ away from home,” Detring says. “This continues to cultivate an environment of solid work ethic in my life, which is especially important now as I am a new small business owner.”

Shepherd is currently in graduate school at the University of Washington in bioengineering. Her research focus is in the development of cheap, rapid and portable diagnostic devices for global health applications.
“As a graduate student, I now realize just how rare and valuable my experiences were as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt,” she says, noting that she feels the School of Engineering’s reputation continues to help and support her. “I feel like my acceptance to graduate school, as well as my success in securing a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to help fund my work, was definitely aided by the quality and reputation of the education I obtained at Vanderbilt.”

Doug Davis says he felt he was already a rich man when he left the School of Engineering in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a job at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard near San Francisco, Calif.

“When I graduated from Vanderbilt, I had a wonderful education and no money, but I didn’t owe anyone any money,” says Davis, BE’65, and now CEO and owner of Atlanta’s Diversified Metal Fabricators. “In retrospect, I was very rich.”

Davis and his wife, Penny, hope to offer future engineers the same bright start.

“Being debt-free [at graduation] probably wasn’t that uncommon then; it is rare today,” Davis says, noting his first semester tuition in 1961 was $350. Today, a semester’s tuition is more than 50 times that amount.

Doug and Penny Davis believe in providing bright starts to future engineers.

The Davises have long supported the School of Engineering through its building fund and with endowed scholarships. In 2005 they set up the Doug and Penny Davis Scholarship for engineering students, adding to it each year, and are now participating in the university’s campaign to raise funds for students through the Opportunity Vanderbilt initiative. Strong proponents for education, the Davises support the university’s recent move to replace all need-based undergraduate student loans with scholarships and grant assistance through the expanded financial aid program.

“Today, tuition has a serious impact on most families’ budgets as well as leaving graduates in debt up to their eyeballs,” Davis says. “They have to spend the next 10 years not pursuing dreams but paying off debt.”

Diverse Dreams

Pursuing dreams after graduation led Davis first to California where he was part of a team of project engineers that designed Trieste III, the third generation of the bathyscape (two-person “deep boat”) Trieste, which reached a record-breaking depth of some seven miles in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench. His team also designed the Deep Submersible Rescue Vehicle to conduct rescue missions for sunken submarines.

He then moved to Florida and opened a gourmet restaurant. Two years later, he moved to Atlanta to work for Bankhead Enterprises, at the time the largest manufacturer of car haulers in the United States. In 1978 he founded Diversified Metal Fabricators, which has become the leading manufacturer and supplier of high-rail equipment used in building and maintaining railroads. Davis now is semiretired and the couple divides their time between Georgia and Florida.

Davis Scholars

Davis strongly believes that he wouldn’t have had those opportunities or his diverse career without the School of Engineering. The students benefiting from Davis’ support feel the same way.

Senior Randy Lee Smith says his Davis scholarship “means the world to me.” The mechanical engineering major fell in love with both Nashville and Vanderbilt during a campus visit and knew he wanted to learn here. “The Davises’ generous donation has enabled me, and several others, to attend Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering,” he says. He was able to tell them of his appreciation when he met the couple during a campus visit in 2008. “They are extremely courteous and genuine,” he says. “We’ve kept in touch and I look forward to meeting them again soon.”

Twins and first-year engineering students Alec and Taylor Coston say their parents frequently reminded them of the burden of student loans as the two began their school searches. “I know that without help, my parents would not be able to afford to send us both to school at Vanderbilt,” Taylor says. His brother agrees. “Vanderbilt would have been a very slim possibility without financial aid,” Alec says. When the Costons received Davis scholarships through Opportunity Vanderbilt, Alec says they were overjoyed.

The Costons like problem solving, the elegance of math and the ideas behind concepts. The Atlanta natives say they were drawn to Vanderbilt engineering because they’ll get a great engineering education and exposure to strong liberal arts programs. Being well-rounded students, Davis notes, is the Vanderbilt experience, and one he thinks is unique.

“The World Will Be a Better Place”

“It’s difficult to convey to an outsider the sense of it,” he says. “One convert is Penny, who has become a cheerleader for the School of Engineering and for Vanderbilt. She always encouraged my support of the university, but a Vanderbilt event a few years ago made a huge impression on her.”

Recalling the occasion, Penny Davis concurs. “A group of freshman engineering students just blew me away,” she says. “I could imagine these students after four years at Vanderbilt. The world will be a better place. I’m Vandy through and through.”

A former teacher, Penny matches her husband’s commitment to education. She says that although their two sons and daughter didn’t attend Vanderbilt, she hopes all five grandchildren will.

The Davises aren’t sitting back, waiting for the time their grandchildren are here, however. They’re involved with their students right now.

“I hope these students will leave Vanderbilt after four years, with diplomas in hand, as rich as I was in 1965,” Davis says.

H. Eugene McBrayer (right) and Peter Pintauro, the newly named H. Eugene McBrayer Professor of Chemical Engineering, discuss fuel cell technology in Pintauro’s lab.

Blend early responsibility with a father’s Depression-era work ethic and a mother’s emphasis on education. Add a competitive nature, a much needed academic scholarship to Vanderbilt University in 1950, and a fortuitous summer job as a junior chemical engineer with Esso Standard Oil Company between junior and senior years.

This formula produces a student from Birmingham, Ala., who earns a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a job at graduation in 1954 with Esso in Baton Rouge, La.

For the next 38 years, H. Eugene McBrayer, BE’54, made his career with that company—which would later become ExxonMobil Corp., Fortune 500’s No. 1 largest American corporation in 2009.

A path that began at Vanderbilt led to a fulfilling career and a blessed life. “It made my life in many ways,” says McBrayer, who retired as president of Exxon Chemical in 1992. Now McBrayer and his wife, Fay, have endowed a chair in the School of Engineering as part of their commitment to education and Vanderbilt. “I have been extremely fortunate in life. Now it’s time to pay it forward,” he says.

Peter N. Pintauro is the first recipient of the H. Eugene McBrayer Chair of Chemical Engineering. The nationally recognized scholar and chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering says he’s honored to hold the chair named after McBrayer.

“Endowed professorships bring prestige to the chair holder, to the benefactor who funded the professorship and to the university,” Pintauro says. “Often such chairs are endowed by alumni like Mr. McBrayer, and in this regard, they establish or reinforce critical links between a department’s past and present.”

Industry Leader

In his career with Exxon, McBrayer moved quickly through the corporation’s management ranks, eventually heading Exxon Enterprises, Exxon Nuclear Co. and finally Exxon Chemical. In the year he retired, he was also awarded the prestigious Chemical Industry Medal given by the America International Group of the Society of Chemical Industry.

While leading Exxon’s chemical business, he served as chairman of the Chemical Manufacturers Association (now the American Chemistry Council) and as a trustee of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award Program. As an officer of the CMA, he and several other chemical company CEOs launched Responsible Care, which has become one of the most successful safety, health and environmental performance improvement initiatives in American industry.

McBrayer’s energy industry background makes Pintauro’s honor as the H. Eugene McBrayer Chair even more appropriate. Pintauro’s research focuses on developing new membranes for hydrogen/air, direct methanol and alkaline fuel cells; modeling species transport in ion-exchange membranes; and investigating electrochemical methods for organic synthesis.

The biggest impact of this research will be on the performance (power output) of fuel cells, which will lead to less expensive fuel cells. Better membranes will improve fuel cell performance and durability, which will ultimately make fuel cells more attractive for portable, automotive and stationary power applications.

“Both of us share the belief that chemical engineering and electrochemistry will play a major role in the world’s energy future,” McBrayer says of Pintauro. “Fuel cells have been around for a long time. Their potential energy conversion efficiency has always been compelling; however, high cost has held back widespread application. Research by Peter and his team could significantly rebalance the cost equation and their membrane developments could have significant application in advanced batteries.”

Pintauro team member Jun Lin (right) briefs Gene McBrayer on a fuel cell research project.

Giving Back

Endowing the H. Eugene McBrayer Chair in Chemical Engineering at the School of Engineering fits nicely into the philanthropic goals of Fay and Gene McBrayer, high school sweethearts who have been married 56 years.

Although they support a number of organizations and causes, the couple has two main philanthropic interests: the Vanderbilt School of Engineering and the Museum of Flight, located in Seattle, where they now live.

“I was so blessed to be able to go to Vanderbilt,” says McBrayer, who couldn’t have attended the School of Engineering without the academic scholarship offered by the university. “I had to maintain a 2.5 grade point average out of a 3.0 every quarter to keep my scholarship. That was a high standard.” He says he had to work hard to keep it while holding a variety of odd jobs and finding summer employment.

A Living Legacy

The McBrayers have previously supported the School of Engineering through the endowed H. Eugene McBrayer and Fay W. McBrayer Scholarship and through the creation of the H. Eugene McBrayer and Fay W. McBrayer multipurpose room adjacent to Adams Atrium in Featheringill Hall, which was completed in 2001.

“I see this type of gift as a crucial element in student and faculty recruitment and retention,” says McBrayer, a member of the School’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni. “Vanderbilt engineering has always attracted excellent students, but it needs more endowed chairs to attract the very best faculty and to further important research.”

In both his interests at VUSE and the Museum of Flight, the engineer and former corporate head advocates STEM—education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And he remains passionate about the power of a chemical engineering degree.

“Chemical engineering is still a key discipline for young people who want to make a real difference in high-tech society,” McBrayer says. “Oh, there may be more popular engineering disciplines today, like biomedical or environmental, but I believe chemical is still the best at teaching young people how to think analytically.”