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Lynn Buege (left) receives the CoE 1992 Excellence in Staff Service Award
from former Dean Peter Banks
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For Mechanical Engineering Senior Supervisor Lynn Buege, marking his 40th anniversary at the University of Michigan will likely be spent doing what he’s done every other day: solving problems and helping faculty and students achieve their goals. That’s no mean feat, considering the breadth of research at ME, but Buege has spent most of his life meeting challenges.
He started early. When he was growing up in Milan, Mich., he told his father he wanted to work at the University of Michigan. His dad told him that was a pretty ambitious goal, so he'd better “bone up” on some things before he applied. Those words were appropriate, as Buege’s first job at the University was in the Department of Anatomy, setting up test stations to gauge the amount of energy necessary to fragment a bone.
“In this first position, I was responsible for designing and constructing a ballistic laboratory that used high speed projectiles to impact and fracture bone,” said Buege, 65. “When the lab was ready, I participated in the fracture study, where various data such as pre- and post-impact velocities were collected and calculations made to determine the energy expended during fracture. It was quite interesting, and we used high-speed cinematography to visually study the fracture mechanism.” Later, in a sign of things to come, Buege engineered and built a better test station with a projectile-firing device that allowed the researchers to run their tests with different size projectiles going different speeds.
Although Buege’s first permanent position at the University of Michigan was in the Medical School, where he started in 1965, he actually had started working at the school in a variety of temporary positions in 1959. His work in those days, which included assembling analog computers for the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and building experimental electronic testing equipment for the Department of Psychology, foreshadowed the range of problems he’d be asked to help solve at ME.
Buege moved to Mechanical Engineering in 1968 as a result of a chance meeting with a friend, ME electronics technician Robert Smith. Smith’s wife had recently died, and Buege, on his way to an appointment, came upon his friend and stopped to console him. Smith indicated that he was going to be leaving the position and that Buege would be an ideal person to fill it. One reference and one interview with Professor Ken Ludema later, Buege joined ME.
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Buege was excited about what would be available to him as a University of Michigan employee. “Before I came to the University of Michigan, I had really wanted to work here,” he said. “I was excited about the chance to learn new technical skills on the job and being close to a world class learning environment where I could take courses and improve my theoretical knowledge. When the opportunity came to join ME, I was excited about the potential here. I had been looking for a position to satisfy my desire for more challenge and further education, and this was an ideal situation.”
While he was an Engineer III for most of his career, Buege now supervises and mentors eight technical personnel. He also oversees the operation of the machine shop where he and his staff, often using numerical machine tools, produce unique components for most of the College of Engineering’s departments and look after the repairs of ME’s equipment.
Naturally, Buege has seen a wide range of changes at the University during his forty-year career. “When I first started, “ he said, “all I needed was paper, pencil, and my bamboo slide rule. Now it’s computers, computers, and more computers. You need them to purchase materials, reconcile purchasing cards, design circuits, calculate results and parameters, and sometimes you need a GPS just to get home.”
While Buege was hard pressed to pick a favorite memory from his 40 years at the University, one certainly was when he was in one of the first groups to win a Staff Excellence award in 1992. He is also proud of the elevator maintenance course he developed and taught for the University’s Plant Department.
There are some 200 elevators on campus and, historically, knowledge about how to fix them was passed from person to person. In order to make information about repairing these complex machines more available and standardized, Buege was able to get the circuitry diagrams from one of the manufacturers, and spent months figuring out how to assemble the information into a course. He estimated it took about 1,000 hours of his spare time to put together the course, comparing the effort to putting together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle when all the pieces are black and just about the same shape.
Even though he longer worked for the Department of Medicine, he maintained a close connection to the field and is justifiably proud of his work with doctors in the Department of Ophthalmology in 1970. The research centered around recording the circulation of dye which had been injected into the eye. Unfortunately, the retina camera being used at the time could only take photographs every 30 seconds, while the research demanded a photo every one or two seconds. Working over a seven-month period, Buege was able to develop a power supply that enabled to camera to meet the researchers’ needs.
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Of course, with the extensive research going on, maintaining proper security is essential, and that was no less true in 1971. When Buege determined that a new lock was needed for his office door, he set about developing one. The result was a four-digit combination lock, which took one of his assistants four hours to crack.
While the responsibilities and achievements that are part of any job anywhere are important, for Buege, his best memories are about the people with whom he has worked. “I have been able to accomplish great things because I have been fortunate enough to be part of a superior team: my supervisors, co-workers and the people I supervise,” he said. “I have been and am extremely dependent on these people, and they make me look good.”
Buege has no plans to retire and likes to spend time with his wife, children and grandson Ryan. The rest of his spare time is spent tinkering with cars, vegetable gardening and, naturally, as he puts it, “exploring technical challenges. I find my work rewarding, and when I finally decide to retire. not much will change. I may just slow down a bit.”