He holds a Professional Engineer license and has 30 years of industrial experience as an Engineer or Engineering Manager at General Motors, Cadnetix, and Motorola. His interests include engineering management, real-time embedded systems, and digital signal processing.

obtained his B.Sc. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Ohio State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from the University of Arkansas. He holds a Professional Engineer certification and worked as an Engineer and Engineering Manger in industry for 20 years before teaching. His interests include project management, HVAC, robotics/automation, and air pollution dispersion modeling.

He holds a Professional Engineer license and has 30 years of industrial experience as an Engineer or Engineering Manager at General Motors, Cadnetix, and Motorola. His interests include engineering management, technological literacy, and real-time embedded systems.

After years as an engineering professional in industry, a career transition into a related field was on the horizon. The events at the beginning of the 21 st century lead to the downsizing of numerous companies and the eventual elimination of countless jobs. As the economy weakened, it became increasingly difficult to find engineering positions, particularly for seasoned managers. Never the less, many former colleagues continued to search within these careers, while a few branched out and explored alternate professions.But one important question had to be answered. Were the skills learned and practiced as an engineering manager transferable? Engineering managers were usually proficient in planning, scheduling, organizing, exploring, controlling, mentoring, communicating, leading, budgeting, administrating and allocating scarce resources. After independent investigation it was determined that these skills were not only transferable but necessary in a wide variety of other fields. Opportunities existed in industry, education, government, project management and technical sales to list just a few. The best fit, however, appeared to be engineering education.After the new career was selected, it led to numerous other questions. How difficult would the transition be? How long would it take? Could engineering and management skills be applied directly into the classroom environment or would they have to be adapted? Would the engineering experience be beneficial? What new skills had to be acquired? What teaching methods should be used? How and where to start? These and many additional questions were answered during the first year as a full time engineering educator. This paper describes the trials, tribulations, successes and lessons learned during the writers first year as a full-time engineering educator. The results may be of great benefit to those in industry considering a similar career change.

and M.B.A. at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. He holds a Professional Engineer certification and was previously an Engineering Manager at Motorola. His interests include engineering management, real-time embedded systems, and digital signal processing.