1/16/2026
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Phillips' time in MechSE spans five decades and counting.
Written by Taylor Parks
Professor Emeritus and registered professional engineer James W. Phillips was a staple in MechSE long before it had its name.
“I enjoy working with the people—the professors as well as the students,” he said of his impressive tenure.
Born in Washington D.C., Phillips earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Catholic University of America and his master’s degree and PhD in engineering from Brown University.
“At first, I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to go into teaching, because there were other opportunities at research labs,” Phillips said, recalling his interest in Sandia Corporation and the GM Research Institute. However, a nudge from Brown’s (now the late) Professor William N. Findlay, who had previously taught in the Department of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics (TAM) at Illinois, encouraged Phillips to consider teaching. At the time, Illinois faculty included some notable names that Phillips recognized.
“I had some idea about Illinois’ presence in the area that I wanted to pursue,” Phillips said. He joined TAM in 1969, which at the time was a standalone department established “(1) to offer instruction in engineering mechanics to undergraduate students, (2) to teach and train graduate students in the field of mechanics, and (3) to conduct a comprehensive research program resulting in the extension of knowledge in all branches of mechanics and related fields.” (See the note from late Department Head Thomas Dolan in this 1968 report).
“Every professor and every graduate TA was given a section of a course to teach—maybe 30 students per section,” he recalled of the teaching structure at the time. “Even in large population courses, like TAM 221 [Introductory Solid Mechanics, now 251] had individual teaching and discussion sections that professors and TAs all taught individually. Everyone made up their own exams, graded the homework, and proctored a combined final—those were the old days.”
For his first semester, Phillips taught statics and dynamics and strength of materials. Later, he taught intermediate solid mechanics, mechanical behavior of materials, and experimental stress analysis, as well as senior design. He also introduced the freshman course TAM 195 [Mechanics in the Modern World].
In 1982, he took over the late Professor Harry Wetenkamp’s industrial testing program. The testing was typically performed in the Talbot Laboratory crane bay and often required the use of the three-million-pound universal testing machine, which was retired in 2022.
“I had to give it some thought, because I knew it was going to take a lot of time,” Phillips said. Not long after he elected to run the program, he realized that he would need more than a PhD to have credibility with industry clients.
“The companies weren’t interested in my degrees,” he recalled. “They wanted to know if I could stamp the reports. I figured out pretty quickly that if I was going to be successful in this endeavor, I would need to be a registered professional engineer.” Phillips passed the PE exam in 1983 and continued to take on commercial work for the next 40 years, ultimately serving more than 100 different companies and performing more than 2,000 different calibrations and tests. Some of the machine’s many uses are illustrated in this poster.
“We tested all kinds of things,” Phillips said. One test that he remembers well was the dynamic loading of an enormous hydraulic earthquake damper, one of several for the new Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge in Saint Louis.
In 1985, Phillips was asked to serve as associate head to take over some of the administrative duties within the department. “I had taken an interest in departmental affairs, particularly the graduate program and alumni affairs, that were not in the strict line of teaching and research,” he said.
During his time as associate head, Phillips authored a history of the TAM Department from 1890 to 1990 as well as a commemorative history of its first department head, Arthur Newell Talbot, who had witnessed the naming of Talbot Lab in his honor in 1938, four years before he died.
He also wrote an extensive biography of his longtime colleague Robert E. Miller, one of TAM’s most memorable teachers.
Phillips continued to serve as associate head into the new millennium, at which time ideas were beginning to form for an entirely new challenge: the possibility of merging TAM with the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering.
“This was a very complicated issue that can be boiled down principally to critical size and to overlap between activities, particularly in research,” he said of the common ground shared by the two departments. “In simple terms, some TAM professors had become very applied in their research, and some ME professors had become more theoretical.”
Discussions surrounding a potential merger began around 2003, with Phillips serving on a committee of M&IE and TAM faculty that was tasked with determining how the departments might make the merge.
“TAM always relished its independence, which is a natural reaction,” Phillips said. Many engineering mechanics undergraduate and TAM graduate students felt the same way, organizing peaceful protests including a “Save TAM” rally. A final decision was reached in 2006. “In the end, the vote came down to the College of Engineering faculty and they voted to merge us.”
Despite the growing pains that accompanied the change, Phillips remembers that the TAM faculty who chose to remain rose to the occasion. “There were many TAM faculty who were already collaborating with other people—not only in mechanical engineering, but in other departments, such as civil engineering, aerospace engineering, materials science, and chemical engineering,” he recalled. “Those collaborations persisted.”
All the degree programs formerly offered by TAM are still offered today within MechSE. With the merger, industrial engineering split off from mechanical and merged with general engineering to form what is now the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering.
Phillips continued as associate head in the combined department until his retirement in 2011. “I’m particularly pleased to see that enrollment in the engineering mechanics curriculum has grown significantly since the merger,” he said. At his retirement party, he performed the TAM 210/211 Blues, which he had written for his statics class in 2008.
Today, 57 years after he first came to campus and 15 years after he officially retired, Phillips remains active in MechSE.
“I enjoy the courses that involve some kind of experimental work,” he said. For example, Phillips continues to facilitate activities in TAM 195 such as a field trip to Urbana’s Carle Park, where pairs of students ride a merry-go-round while attempting to toss tennis balls back and forth. Cameras are set up behind one of the students on the merry-go-round and on the ground to compare the ball’s motion from different frames of reference.
He also continues to assist with in concrete testing in TAM 324/CEE 300 [Behavior of Materials] and with the strain gage and photoelasticity labs in TAM 456 [Experimental Stress Analysis]. He often advises design teams in ME 470 [Senior Design Project]. “This semester, I advised a great team on a project for Sandia National Labs,” he said. “It was very rewarding.”
Phillips also continues to advise MechSE undergraduates. “The experience that our undergraduates gain put them in a wonderful position to pursue work in industry or to continue at the graduate level for advanced training” he said of the curricula in engineering mechanics and mechanical engineering. “They have the privilege of picking what they would like to do. That’s the most important thing—to pick something that they’re interested in and can get involved with and enjoy.”