1958 to 1992 - The Ascendancy of Mechanics
Dr. Lazan was a well-known researcher in the mechanics of materials whose orientation was toward engineering science. Lazan moved the department in the direction of engineering science by means of the faculty he hired. All faculty hires under Lazan were in the areas of solid or fluid mechanics with no faculty hired in aeronautical engineering. In the post-Sputnik era, research funds were re-directed to engineering science-oriented programs. During this time, the external funding base for the department changed from projects at RAL to projects on the main campus. The extensive facilities and personnel at RAL required large externally funded projects. Professor Rudolf Hermann was one of the world's leading experimental aerodynamicists and was instrumental in obtaining the large grants and contracts necessary for the existence of RAL. When Hermann left the University in 1962, there were few faculty who wished to continue the large aeronautical based projects at RAL. As a consequence of reduced funding, RAL closed its doors in the mid-1960s.
Dr. Lazan was forced to resign as Department Head in the early 1960s due illness; however, during his tenure as Department Head, he hired most of the faculty who shaped the Department in the 1960s and 1970s. Professor P. R. "Pat" Sethna replaced Lazan in 1966. Pat Sethna had received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Engineering Mechanics and joined the University of Minnesota in 1956. His specialty was non-linear systems and he had a very strong applied mathematics orientation. Under his leadership the Department continued its orientation towards engineering science.
In 1972, the name of the Department was changed from Aeronautical Engineering to Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics. Up to that time courses had been designated Aero. or M&M (Mechanics and Materials) depending on whether they had been part of the old Aeronautical or Mechanics and Materials departments. The new course designator AEM (Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics) was adopted for all courses. Despite the name change, the department was still heavily oriented toward theoretical mechanics with an applied mathematics flavor.
In the early 1970s, the aerospace industry underwent a severe recession due to the end of the Vietnam War and the termination of the Apollo Program. Undergraduate enrollments plummeted. At the same time there was a substantial reallocation of funds from engineering, sciences, and liberal arts to the health sciences. Again there were proposals to merge the Aerospace Engineering department with Mechanical Engineering. This did not occur, but the department lost a number of faculty positions during this period and there were essentially no new faculty hires from the early 1970s to the early 1980s. During this period enrollments gradually increased but never reached the level of the late 1960s.
In the late 1970s expenditures in the aerospace field began to increase dramatically. This increase was driven primarily by increased defense spending. The demand for aerospace engineers rose sharply and enrollments in the Department grew. In 1989, enrollments peaked at about 600 undergraduates and the AEM Department had the largest undergraduate enrollment of any engineering department at the University of Minnesota. The number of faculty members also increased to a maximum of 21.
A number of new young faculty members were hired beginning in 1989, including the first two female faculty. These younger faculty members had, for the most part, a more applied orientation than did the more senior faculty members. This was to have important positive implications for the future. Nationwide, research funding priorities in engineering began to shift from theoretical to applied. This shift was due to the perception that theoretical engineering research performed at universities had produced relatively few practical benefits. Experimental and computational research began to replace "pencil and paper" studies. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the number of research dollars per faculty member in the AEM Department was the lowest of all of the engineering departments at the University of Minnesota.
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Last Modified: 2007-07-24 at 10:10:25 -- this is in International Standard Date and Time Notation