Outlook Magazine - Fall 2018

Paying it forward Donations that boost professors’ research, in the end, are helping students begin careers

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n May, Jamison Noye proudly walked across the Johnson Fieldhouse stage to become one of the first graduates of UW-Stout’s three-year-old mechanical engineering program. The New Richmond, Wis., native, in typical university fashion, soon thereafter began a full-time job that he locked down before commencement day. It may seem simple — get a diploma, land a job. But why has UW- Stout, with a 98.2 percent employment rate for recent graduates, done exceedingly well over the years? One of the reasons UW-Stout’s graduates are career-ready can be traced back several steps to philanthropic decisions to support the work of professors. UW-Stout has about a half-dozen named professorships created with donations that award faculty members with special funding for research. Professors who receive the honors then incorporate new-found knowledge into their curricula, keeping classes current with industry standards and trends. The Fulton and Edna Holtby Manufacturing Engineering Chair, for example, was created through a donation by the Holtbys to Stout University Foundation. This year, David Ding and Adam Kramschuster each will receive $75,000 over three years. Ding will implement a new certification program, Industry 4.0, into the manufacturing engineering program and do other research. Kramschuster will involve students in the plastics engineering lab on research into new injection molding technology. From 2015-2017, Professor Scott Springer was the Holtby chair and did research on 3D printers that updated his Advanced Manufacturing class. “This is why I came to UW-Stout. There ar- en’t a lot of schools that have classes like these,” said Anthony Panici, of Wilmette, Ill., an engineering technology major who took Springer’s class.

For students like Noye, the Holtby chair and other named

professorships hit home, even though they’ve likely never heard of the Holtbys.

Jamison Noye

Noye’s skills — he double-majored in mechanical and manufacturing engineering — helped him get hired at McNally Industries in Grantsburg as a design engineer. McNally serves the U.S. Department of Defense and is the world’s largest prime contractor with hydromechanical and electromechanical systems, including for precision machined components for defense and aerospace. “The professors in the STEM program are awesome,” Noye said. “They're extremely knowledgeable and really seem to care about students learning and being prepared for industry. The problem- solving skills that we learn in our classes allow us to be ready for any challenges we will face in our careers.” In the university’s most recent employment report, 100 percent of 2016-2017 plastics and computer engineering graduates and 98 percent of manufacturing engineering graduates had full-time jobs or had other defined career paths. Along with Ding and Kramschuster, three other faculty members received professorships — in apparel design, psychology and graphic design — beginning in 2018-19, with the total amount awarded more than $180,000. Forward thinking — or paying it forward — by the Holtbys and other legacy donors has provided, and will for generations to come, support the work of UW-Stout’s faculty.

WHO WAS Fulton Holtby?

Fulton Holtby was a pioneering mechanical engineering professor for 41 years at the University of Minnesota. Along with funding the Holtby Manufacturing Engineering Chair at UW-Stout, he and his wife, Edna, created a scholarship in their name for engineering students. He received an honorary doctorate from the university, and the Holtby Museum opened recently in Menomonie.

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