 What or who inspired you to choose engineering?
In my case, I was playing with engineering toys as a youngster, even before high-school. At the time, there were a number of kit manufacturers. You could buy a television, for example, and put it all together. I found it interesting. On top of that, I have always been involved in the music business, so I ended up making devices for my electric guitar. My senior design project was a graphic equalizer that I used for audio production. I still have it today, and I used it for many years.
So is being a musician your missed career?
Actually I started out at UIC studying electrical engineering, but back then the music business was just fantastic in this town, and I was doing extremely well in that. But starting from the late sixties, salaries slowly came down, and it became too difficult to make a living from music. Back then, musicians were everywhere; every bar had a live band, so there was a lot of demand. But then music started to become accessible by electrical playing devices, so gradually people didn't need a live band to hear good music.
Did you ever play any big shows?
I played in the House of Blues. But I would mostly do work for private functions, fundraisers, expensive weddings, things like that. From the late seventies to early the eighties, I was teaching jazz and classical guitar in three universities. And then I foresaw the change that was about to take place in the music scene, so I went back to studying electrical engineering. After I graduated I was offered to run the circuit-labs at UIC. In those days we had over 300 students per term in the circuits class (ECE 225 today); that's a lot of work. In the eighties everybody wanted to be an electrical engineer because the industry was booming, but then the dot com went bust. Since then it's been going up and down. However, what's happened as a result is today more of the students who do take EE, CE and CS jobs are those who really want to be engineers, not just those looking for a job. So the quality, in that sense, is better.
Going back to the eighties and music, people started getting the idea that you study music to become a star, instead of wanting to be good musicians. When teaching music, you mentor people; you work with them one-on-one, so you invest a lot of effort to set their minds. But when the mindset is so cockeyed, "hey, I wanna be a star", after a while it stopped being rewarding to me. On the other hand, when I would teach classes here it would go great; I got a bigger charge out of that. So I focused more on engineering.
In a way, the same thing that happened to music is happening in other areas. People don't go to school to get an education; they're looking directly for the job. But if the focus is only on the job, you struggle. We need to be more education-focused and a bit less job-focused, even though it's engrained in our culture. I don't know how we should actually treat that in the real world, but if you're a teacher and your students' purpose for taking your class is to get a job, you have a hard time teaching. Students are less motivated to know the material. It's kind of the pattern I had with music.
What kind of traits do you think are most important for young engineers?
If you want to be successful in your endeavors, that area should also be your hobby. It should be your true interest. If you haven't already developed that, try to play with it and make a hobby of it, buy kits, tinker with stuff, test it, see if you're having fun.
The hard thing about electronics today is that it's so hard to understand how things work because it's all so digital and non-intuitive anymore...
That is not the case! Actually, more kits are available today to learn electronics than before, and they are only ten cents on the dollar of what they were twenty years ago. So it really is more accessible today, without question. Just google electronic kits! It's even true with mechanical devices. There's equipment that makes robotics and machines that move with robotic arms, wheels, you name it. You want to study aeronautics? There are so many cheap airplane models available.
Here at UIC, we've been trying to push more of our engineering courses to earlier in the career so students can sort of survey certain areas of engineering in an early stage. Schools around the country are beginning to realize that students need to understand earlier in their career what they are getting into. Traditionally you didn't get into your major in any engineering curriculum until about your first junior term. So you were already two years committed. Actually, I'm currently involved - and so are Professor Goncharoff and a few other people here - in a number of programs that try to show high school students what engineering is about.
What was the most challenging engineering project you worked on? I've always been in the teaching profession. If I was to go out there, I'd want to be a machine designer.
What kind of machines?
It wouldn't matter, probably packaging machines, because you do everything. You do electronics, you do controls, you have machine stuff, could be fluids for example. To me that would be the best engineering job. Controls are fascinating to me, because controls run everything and you get to use just about everything you learned.
Who would you consider a role model or mentor for you?
My role models and mentors are faculty members that I had here. I've had some really good teachers over the years that I think that the way they did things was effective and I try to do the things the way they did. Roland Priemer was my professor, he was a great teacher, and Sharad Laxpati were here, Sanafanan was here; he retired a couple of years ago. He taught controls, and he was just a dynamo in the classroom. I had some good music teachers, too.
What kind of a student were you? Would you as a professor approve of you as a student?
I was not such a good student the first time around. But when I came back to finish I was a good student. I worked hard. You know, when you're focused and you really know you want to do something, you just do it. We're back to where we started; you have to have the interest in what you're studying, and then you'll make yourself get it. That's actually a pretty good rule for people to use when they're studying, to just do it till you get it, and you will. If you've past calculus, you can get an A in all your engineering classes - not that an A is what counts - just do the work. Another thing is reviewing. Students should constantly review the material.
OK, professor, it's almost 3 pm and you'll be late for your class. Thank you for your time!
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