industrial-engineering

Joseph Agor, assistant professor of industrial engineering.

Thirty-nine years ago, Ken Funk traveled from one OSU (The Ohio State University) to another (Oregon State University). He’d just graduated with a doctorate in industrial and systems engineering, and headed west to start his appointment in the (then) Department of Industrial and General Engineering. He would eventually serve as the interim head of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering from 2005 to 2006 as it merged with the Department of Mechanical Engineering to become the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering.

The anthropology courses that Richard “Dick” Evans (‘69 B.S., Industrial Engineering) took at Oregon State University taught him things that he has applied to many aspects of his life. He learned that tribes are not only groups of people linked by family, culture, religion, or economic ties; they can also be smaller bands of people who share a common language or ideology.

The Mission District in San Francisco is a microcosm of colliding tribes and cultures, and home to some of the largest concentrations of urban murals and street art in the world.

In the 1980s, only about 1 in 16 American engineers was a woman. That proportion is a lot higher in the Wong family. Of six sisters, five became engineers, and all five graduated with engineering degrees from Oregon State University.

The five sisters are Pam Wong (’79 B.S.,Industrial Engineering), May Wong Knotts (’80 B.S., Mechanical Engineering), Sun Noble (’84 B.S., Civil Engineering), Michelle Wei Wong Lostra (’85 B.S., Civil Engineering), and Lai Wong-Smith (’86 B.S., Computer Science).