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Robert Loewy plans to step down as Aerospace Engineering School Chair in June. |
Even though Aerospace Engineering Professor Robert Loewy plans to step down as school chair in June, he says he isn’t quite ready to retire. School chair since fall 1993, Loewy has had an influential career in industry, government and academia for more than 60 years.
“Over the past year, I’ve been talking with both the dean and the provost about how, at the close of my 15 years as chair, I might be useful to Georgia Tech in some other way,” he said.
Loewy, who also spent 15 years in the aircraft industry, considers rotary wing aircraft his specialty—as evidenced by the many models of helicopters in his office, among planes and rockets. “I’m really a structural dynamicist and an aero-elastician,” he says, adding that he has conducted research in these disciplines on fixed-wing aircraft, space launch vehicles, and satellites.
He has worked for Glenn L. Martin—now Martin Marietta—and also for what was at the time called Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, New York, (now Calspan). At Boeing Helicopter division, Loewy was the chief technical engineer, where he was deeply involved in the development of the company’s rotary wing aircraft, including the Chinook, a double-rotor helicopter often seen on TV.
The self-proclaimed history buff was a faculty member at the University of Rochester from 1962 to ’74, where he was eventually named dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “I found it [academia] was a good fit for me,” he said. “The fit between a person’s spectrum of abilities and the spectrum of requirements for the job will usually play an important role in that person’s job satisfaction.” In 1974, he was named provost and vice president of academic affairs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where as a student he had received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. When he stepped down, he was named the first Institute Professor in RPI’s history.
In 1982, he formed the Rotorcraft Technology Center at RPI, one of the three that were first established. “In that capacity, I was competing with Georgia Tech, because [Tech] had the first and the biggest of the rotorcraft centers,” he said. “The centers were originally established to provide students with sufficient coverage of the rotary wing disciplines so that they would would graduate with a full grasp of what the problems are and how to solve them in rotary wing aircraft development.”
Loewy never stopped consulting with industry, except for 1965 to 1966, when he was named chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force. When he came to Tech, it was in his current position. Aspects of the chair‘s responsibilities that he described fondly include lecturing and teaching (“I’ve always taught a course a year.”), working with faculty and staff he calls “outstanding” and interacting with “extremely bright” students. “The students are active in generating contact,” Loewy said, adding the AESSAC (Aerospace Engineering School Student Advisory Council) has often taken the time to have lunch with him, or ask him to present a seminar on various subjects.
Other student groups include chapters of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Helicopter Society and the Aeronautical Honor Society of Sigma Gamma Tau. Depending on how proactive they are, many of the groups invite Loewy to speak, which he says works out to a couple of times a year.
In the foreseeable future, although he may like to lecture from time to time, he said he doesn’t think teaching regularly will be what he would like to do. He’s also not involved with the selection process, overseen by former Mechanical Engineering Chair and Professor Ward Winer.
As far as taking the school’s pulse, Loewy says the School is “absolutely” fulfilling its responsibility to the students. “Industry [and] government come here and try and hire our folks,” he said. “A significant number of our graduates are taking their places on the faculties of other universities.
“There’s a certain inertia in the reputations of university departments and universities as a whole,” he added. “Although U.S. News & World Report ranks aerospace engineering at Tech second among national undergraduate programs and fifth among graduate programs, Aerospace Engineering here has been a leading school for many years, and is getting better all the time. Over time, our reputation will catch up with the true character of the place.”
Aerospace Engineering has 39 full-time faculty members and a student body of roughly 700 undergraduates and 500 master’s and doctoral students. Nominations and applications for school chair will be accepted until the position is filled. |
