After a four-decade career, Associate Professor Bruce Karnopp is retiring. Sort of. While Karnopp was named Associate Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the end of August 2004, he adds "and counting" when tallying the years he's spent teaching--38 of them at U-M. He will continue to serve the ME department and College.
Karnopp joined the ME faculty in 1968 after spending three years as an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. He earned his bachelor's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his master's from Brown and his PhD in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin. He has distinguished himself in the field of dynamics, written the widely published textbook, "Introduction to Dynamics," and developed software to solve problems in dynamics, strength of materials, applied mathematics and vibrations. The focus of his own research has been vibrations and vibration analysis and damping capacity.
At U-M, Karnopp was promoted to Associate Professor in 1973 and was granted tenure in 1974, a milestone that still stands out in his mind among numerous professional accomplishments. Another, he says, was being named Assistant Dean of the College in 1983. He held that position for six years, during which time he developed and instituted recruiting programs for underrepresented students. He recruited minority students through the Ford Fairlane Mansion in Dearborn and students from rural areas through his Alpena Project. He served on the University's Admission's Advisory Committee from 1987 to 1996 and, as chair, drafted a mission statement galvanizing the University's commitment to diversity.
But Karnopp didn't stop with recruiting students and writing mission statements. He put principles into action by participating in the College's Summer Engineering Academy, where he helped prepare incoming students to enter--and excel in--the College's engineering programs. For more than 15 years, he's also served as the faculty contact for the College of Engineering Orientation program, in which each entering class of about 1,000 students and their parents participate. "These students are fresh out of high school and have little or no understanding of the engineering field," says Karnopp, which is why "it's important to give them an idea of the courses they'll take and the opportunities available to them. The experience they get at Orientation motivates them."
In the classroom, where Karnopp taught introductory and intermediate dynamics at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, his teaching evaluation score averaged 4.71/5.0. Over the years Karnopp says students have told him they've appreciated his punctuality and preparedness. Recently a student from 1979 sent Karnopp an email after finding an old faculty directory. "I enjoyed your course and text immensely. (I still refer to the text many times.) It was all laid out so beautifully and clearly, and all we had to do was study." The former student, John Moskwa, also fondly remembers Karnopp's musical quips.
Fifteen years ago Moskwa founded the Powertrain Control Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. The lab develops variations of high bandwidth transient test systems and does control and modeling research with these tools. And he credits Karnopp with providing him "the solid foundation in dynamics, which is indispensable to the work we do."
Karnopp has been formally recognized as an outstanding educator several times. He is a recipient of the Amoco Teaching Award, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship, the College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, the Michigan Association of Governing Boards of State Universities Distinguished Faculty Award and selected as the Professor of the Term six times by the U-M chapter of Pi Tau Sigma.
Karnopp has seen plenty of changes since he began teaching at U-M in 1968. "Decades ago, many students came from working class or farm backgrounds. They had life experiences that dovetailed with engineering. Today our students are smart but often have never held a drill or wrench in their hands. All too often, these students are unsure what a career in engineering would entail." The change in technology, he adds, is "dramatic. We've gone from slide rules to personal computers, from rotary phones to omnipresent cell phones."
Karnopp is likely to continue to see more changes on campus since, despite his "emeritus" title, he will still teach Engineering 100 this winter, serve as faculty contact for next summer's orientation program and finalize a set of computer programs to be incorporated into his second book.
Over the years, some 15,000 students have benefited from Karnopp's commitment to education and learning. It's a commitment, and philosophy, that he applies to his own life as well. In addition to looking forward to spending more time with his wife, children and grandchildren now that has less of a workload, he's also anxious to learn a new skill. "It's often said that engineers should look forward to life-long learning if they are to remain in the profession. My wife gave me a 4X5 super-graphic camera for my 66th birthday and retirement. Going from roll film, which I have used for 50 years, to sheet film has put me on the earliest part of the learning curve. This is both exciting and frustrating, but to have the time to work on it gives me a great deal of enjoyment."
As former student Moskwa joked in his email to Karnopp, "You are much more than a one-dimensional engineer."