John Roy English: Education engineer

FAYETTEVILLE - The crowd erupted in cheers, encouraging the athlete down the football field at Razorback Stadium. Young John English, clad in football pads, ran with all his might until the sports commentator made the call that a touchdown had been made. He celebrated at the end of his parents’ backyard before shutting off the radio and reluctantly going inside.

English, now 56, is the newly hired dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas. That he always wanted to be a Razorback and thought everyone attended the university says a little about his view of life now.

“They’re paying me to do this, that’s the crazy thing,” he says of his lucky lot. “My wife and I can’t believe that we’re here. I mean, to be the dean where you went to school is absolutely amazing.

“You have to take what chances the good Lord gives you and he gave us this one.”

English grew up in Prairie Grove, a rural community 12 miles west of Fayetteville. As the son of two native Arkansans, he worked on the family farm hauling hay, and though he was a decent student in high school, it was his parents who insisted he attend college. Both had attended UA but left without degrees, and his father wouldn’t let him make the same mistake of ditching education in favor of the immediacy of a nice paycheck.

His father worked in the West Annex on the Razorback campus, and English grew accustomed to the company of Dan Ferritor, who would later become chancellor; longtime professor Reed Greenwood; and the familiar surroundings of the Arkansas Union, Brenda’s Better Burger and Ozark Mountain Smokehouse.

It was home.

A child of the Space Age, he revered Neil Armstrong and set out to be an engineer, thinking that all engineers worked for NASA.

FROM FARM TO LAB

In 1976, English entered the University of Arkansas and studied mechanical engineering, commuting from his parents’ home and often catching a ride with his dad on his way to work. Aside from the rude awakeningthat all engineers did not in fact work for NASA, he liked it. Making molds and casting wasn’t up his alley, but he found his niche in electrical engineering.

Unlike many prestigious academic researchers, English can relate to the average student experience at UA from his days living in Yocum Hall, making friends through University Baptist Church within walking distance of campus, and having to take finances into his own hands.

“I put myself in the category of an OK student,” he says. “I didn’t knock the top off the curved charts. I had to work myself through college. A combination of work, loans, grants … I actually never received any scholarships.”

He met a beautiful Arkansas student named Elizabeth, took her to Tim’s Pizza for their first date andsquare dancing for the next and soon they began their life together as a married couple.

English found special guidance with professors Hamdy Taha, who helped him sort out what type of work he was suited for, and Neil Schmitt, who was professionally and personallyconnected to him as teacher and Sunday School instructor.

“He was a very diligent student who worked hard to do his best,” says Schmitt, dean emeritus of the College of Engineering. “He had a highly competitive nature, but made time to be involved in many extracurricular activities. He’s deeply compassionate and cares about the welfare of all.”

English worked hard to earn his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and by the time he graduated in 1980, he had a wealth of internship experiences with electricity companies including Western Electric and the AT&T Long Lines division.

He knew his engineering degree would take him farther if he earned a master’s degree, and so considered the popular pragmatic route for engineers at the time - a combination of science and business, which helped many land prestigious jobs and build promising careers. He thought he would follow his peers to the master’s of business administration program, but was awarded the opportunity as a teaching and research assistant. It came with tuition paid and a stipend, which was too good to pass up. Two years later, he came away with a master’s of science in operations research, a thesis predicting the widespread use of electric vehicles in Arkansas by 2000, and a job offer from AT&T.

ROUND HOLE, SQUARE PEG

All engineering graduates face the crossroads of industry and academia, and English chose industry first. When he accepted the position with AT&T, the newlyweds moved to Kansas City, where his previous internship experiences had been. Within a few years in facilities planning, he learned how to direct teams to expand the network and expand bandwidth on antennas before the days of fiber optics. In later years, he worked in company performance evaluation and efficiency, and though it was good work, he decided it wasn’t for him. At times, supervisor relations were more difficult than the actual work and the words of his friends and family reminded him that he was often better off making his own path.

Taha was among them. He had once pointed out English’s potential to become an engineering professor, and so English took the chance to find out whether that was true. He applied to a number of colleges known for their engineering programs, and chose Oklahoma State University to do doctoral work in industrial engineering.

Even far from home, he was never out of the reach of his Arkansas family. AT&T had been filled with other UA alumni and his adviser at OSU was a close connection of Chancellor Emeritus John White and other Arkansas engineering professors. His home had influenced all his opportunities in one way or another.

Darin Nutter, a UA engineering professor, met English while they were graduate students at OSU, and says his easygoing and empathetic nature hasn’t changed.

“John is a warm and approachable person,” Nutter says. “I can always count on him for his friendship.

“I believe John’s leadership abilities are based on his integrity, his care for the success of others, and his focus on core goals.”

A newly minted professor with a Ph.D. in hand, he took his first faculty position as an engineering professor at Texas A&M in 1988, turning down offers from the North Carolina State University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Arkansas.

He was like a fish in water.

“[As] a faculty member, you’re very autonomous,” English says. “You teach your classes, you work with your graduate students, you have a department head, but you’re autonomous. You’re empowered, you’re insubordinate. It’s perfect for a guy whose theme is ‘My Way.’”

It didn’t take long for UA to come calling again, and he returned home in 1991 as an industrial engineering professor.

English’s enthusiasm for working with students was a sentiment always returned.His teaching years were peppered with awards of Outstanding Industrial Engineering Professor in 1992, the Halliburton Teaching Award in 1995, and the Texas Instruments Outstanding Teacher award two years in a row, 1997 and 1998.

As a professor with experience in statistical quality control, he was integral in advising White during White’s time as president of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Foundation.

“He was far more knowledgeable about it than I was,” White says. “He was always in the background making me look like I knew what I was doing. I have high regard for him professionally and personally. He and his wife are quality people.”

English was a part of a tight-knit team he admired, trusted and could work with for inordinate amounts of time, including Tom Landers, now the dean of engineering at the University of Oklahoma; Don Taylor, longtime industrial engineering department head at Virginia Tech; and the late Rick Malstrom, head of the UA engineering department for 13 years. As a leader, Malstrom was a good communicator and connected with people naturally, and English says he aspires to that.His way of getting people to pitch in without hesitation made the institution grow in reputation and ability.

“I don’t think we even knew we were raising the national reputation, we were just committed to the department. We worked so hard, all these hours and we just [basically] lived together, ate together … it was an incredible time and we informed Rick that we had given him the best years of our lives,” English says.

When Malstrom passed away unexpectedly in 2000, the faculty’s decision to fill his shoes with English as department head spoke to his natural dedication to the college.

“Up to that time, I don’t think that he had given a lot of thought to it or interest in becoming department head,” White says. “But once he was in it, he did a good job.”

Though he would neversay so, his variety of experiences in the college meant he had a unique perspective suited to being department head. At UA, he had been a student, teaching and research assistant, professor, researcher and research director.

He settled into the role with relative ease and other campuses took notice.

ROOKIE DEAN NO MORE

Kansas State University saw leadership potential in English, who by the time he was department head had secured more than $1.5 million in research funding during his career, and invited him to be the dean of its college of engineering.

John and his wife jumped at the opportunity.

At Kansas State, English fell in love with the atmosphere in Manhattan, Kan., which reminded him of Fayetteville in the 1970s, and its people. His self-described rookie years as dean taught him the importance of balancing responsibilities to the students, faculty and staff, departments and curriculum, as well as those to alumni, donors and the school’s national reputation.

“It’s a big job. You have a lot of constituents, a lot of different people you work with, a lot of people looking at you, but you’re also responsible for the curriculum that you love,” he says.

He led the college in a fundraising effort that for a few years exceeded the development proceeds of all other university departments, including athletics. It gave the department the means to increase enrollment - from 2,700 to 3,300 engineering students in the six years he was dean - andbreak ground on a new engineering building. Under his leadership, the department increased production of doctoral graduates and research expenditures, created a solid strategic plan and strengthened relations with the college advisory council.

When English was hired as the dean for the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas last year, he was ready to come home and was armed with several ideas for how to hit the ground running.

The UA College of Engineering is the only comprehensive engineering program in the state and includes eight departments, each with undergraduate and graduate studies, research opportunities even for undergraduate students, a number of buildings and a research park, located a short drive from campus.

In the time English was away, the college nearly doubled in size, from 1,600 students to more than 3,000, and accepted its largest incoming class of 700 in 2012. It’s quickly gaining national attention with a recently launched biomedical department, elevating UA to the ranks of Allied Health World’s “10 Schools Driving Healthcare Innovation.”

Needless to say, English is honored to lead the college.

“We’re going to produce better leaders for tomorrow,” he says. “We’re going to make sure those engineers are ready to work. That’s what we do at a great land grant [university] like Arkansas.”

He hopes for even more student growth and is preparing the college to see it, with a new strategic plan, thehiring of several new faculty members in the coming years - eight professors and two department heads this year alone - and hopes the university can eventually build a new engineering facility, since the engineering campus is spread out.

“I’m all for ACT scores and GPAs and student leadership .… We need to have all those things, but as a land grant institution … we have to be sensitive to give people the opportunity to go to college,” he says.

It’s a tall order, corralling a faculty who had $20 million in research expenditures in a single year and providing 3,000 students with the right environment to build a successful career, but his already established rapport seems like it will go a long way.

“I know [most] of the faculty because I grew up with them here,” he says. “They challenge my own decisions regularly and I think it’s better that we have no pretense here whatsoever. They know me, they know where I came from, I know them and I think we’ll be more efficient in our operation here.”

His colleagues view his time as dean as a hopeful one.

“For him, being the dean is not a job, it’s a calling,” White says. “It’s a passion and it’s a way to help an institution he cares for. That makes him effective.”

Heading into Bell Engineering Center, the largest of the department’s facilities, English holds the door open for a student who doesn’t even bat an eye at the gesture. A chemical engineering professor yells to catch his attention. He smiles, glad to be approachable and ready to work as part of a team.