PROFILE:
Training Industry Staff;
Academic Faculty Role
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Throughout his career, Bob has held responsibilities
for orientation of new engineers and technical staff. During onsite
assignments he conducts pre-commissioning training for operations and
maintenance staff. He has also been consistently chosen to chose and assign
mini-projects for summer interns, for mutual benefit of the firms and the
interns. The narrative below weaves his academic and training roles into a
chronology.Bob's undergraduate
degree is in Chemical and Materials
Engineering at University of
Auckland, a member of the
founding class.
He worked three summers as an intern: for N.Z. Roads, North Broken Hill Ltd., and
for Shell Oil in Geelong, VA. After graduating with Honours, Bob was
industrially sponsored for a Ph.D. in "Expert Systems in Steelmaking"
part-time, while teaching at University of Auckland.
Bob migrated to US in 1972, then invited
urgently back to NZ in 1983 to
become a Senior Lecturer for "Process Design" and
"Process Analysis and
Economics" (his
predecessor had been seconded to Shell's
NZ Refining Company
to deal with an urgent $1 billion upgrade project precipitated by the
Iran - Iraq war)
Bob served on Auckland U's
Engineering School curriculum redesign,
designed and built
a six-station "Computer-Based Training" lab for process design, served on campus-wide technology committee,
taught Materials Engineering to the skipper who took the
America's Cup from US!
In 1985
Mobil asked the University Chancellor to release him to
mentor new engineers for the
commissioning of N.Z. SynFuel. In 1990 Bob transferred to Mobil R&D Corp
in Princeton where his role included mentoring
co-op Drexel interns.
He trained staff globally on Mobil "Crude Oil Assays"
software in 1992, in "GENIE"
best practices tools for EH&S 1996-1997,
and
Korea Gas engineers on American design codes in 1997.
In
2002 American University appointed him as a "Researcher-in-Residence",
principally to set up GIS bench strength at the Faculty and graduate
program level through AU's "Center for
Teaching Excellence". He helped co-write plans for PSM
(Professional Sciences Masters) program in 2003 which won Sloan
Foundation funding, hosted Professional MS
briefings, and featured on their brochure
cover.
In 2003 and 2004 he was summer technology advisor to
the
School of Public Service
in DC for 40 top high school students from across the US wanting to
pursue a career in public service.
Spring 2006 he was adjunct at Western Washington University, taught
Introduction to Planning plus a GIS course including the Birch Bay
town center study, photo-map history of
Bellingham harbor.
In 2008 he was invited to
provide peer review Rice University Chem. Eng'rg. Design Project
re-accreditation. |
