7/11/2012 By William Bowman
Written by By William Bowman
A new member of the MechSE Alumni Board, Sutherland was on campus in April for the board’s annual meeting. Sutherland said he was impressed with many initiatives in the department, including the new, one-year master’s degree program with certificate. This new degree serves mechanical engineers who want an advanced degree and enhanced preparation for a career in Energy Systems or Micro and Nano Systems Engineering.
Sutherland pointed out that he has spent much of his career studying how to effectively collaborate with others, and he hopes that knowledge can facilitate additional collaborations and connections between his alma mater and Purdue. “The two universities have historically had many connections; current faculty such as Placid Ferreira, Debasish Dutta, and Tony Jacobi are Purdue grads, and there are many Illinois grads at Purdue,” he said. “There is a tremendous opportunity to leverage these ties for mutually beneficial collaborations.”
After earning his PhD in 1987, Sutherland held a visiting faculty position in mechanical engineering at Illinois for two years before helping to launch Process Design and Control, Inc. (PDC), a startup firm in Champaign. The company specialized in software development, consulting, and training for statistical process control, design of experiments, and machining simulation.
While he worked at the startup, he continued teaching on campus as an adjunct faculty member. He also worked with his doctoral advisor, Richard DeVor, on a textbook. According to Sutherland, he and DeVor would regularly write from 4:00 a.m. until 8:00 a.m. and then he’d head to work at the company and work until evening. “Statistical Quality Design and Control: Contemporary Concepts and Methods,” was published in 1992, and has been used at hundreds of colleges and universities.
“I had a young family then,” noted Sutherland, “and, it was hard to have one and a half full time jobs. Obviously, I enjoyed teaching, which is why I continued teaching in addition to all the activities at PDC. But, ultimately, I had to give something up.”
In 1991, he left Illinois for the upper peninsula of Michigan, where he joined the faculty at Michigan Technological University (MTU). Sutherland’s research interests included environmentally responsible design and manufacturing and sustainable systems. Specific research projects examined ways to reduce the use of cutting fluids in machining; air quality issues in terms of machining, casting, and welding; remanufacturing; and sustainability of the automotive recycling infrastructure.
Sutherland served as director of MTU’s Sustainable Futures Institute, an education and research center with $15 million in research expenditures, and projects that addressed all areas of sustainable systems development. In addition, he led a $3.5 million National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship grant that enabled students to approach sustainability from industrial, environmental, and policy perspectives. In 2009, he joined Purdue’s College of Engineering.
As a department head, he’s now advocating for ecological engineering. “Environmental engineering as traditionally practiced has focused on containing and mitigating waste and treating pollution,” he explained about the new department at Purdue. “We’re trying to create curricula and pursue research that avoids or prevents pollution in the first place.”
In addition to awarding a bachelor’s degree, his department also allows students in the traditional engineering departments to earn a minor in environmental and ecological engineering. Ultimately, the department will also offer graduate level degrees.