New engineering endowed chair helps Michigan industry

Grand Valley State University’s School of Engineering has long had a special focus on preparing undergraduates to work in Michigan’s important industrial sector. Now, the school is making some moves to improve that preparation.

The university has named Chris Plouff as its new James R. Sebastian Endowed Chair in Engineering Cooperative Education and Educational Development. In that role, Plouff will collect baseline data on programs and try to improve them to better serve both students and industry. Plouff previously was director of Career Services at Grand Valley. He has an engineering background and will teach classes as well as help develop curriculum.

“We wanted to bring in somebody who can enhance the quality of the engineering education process. Chris possesses two important qualities — a background in engineering and experience placing students in the workplace,” said Paul Plotkowski, dean of the Seymour and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and Computing at Grand Valley. “His impact will extend far beyond curriculum. The results of his work will influence how competitive and innovative our engineers are, and that affects how manufacturers succeed.”

Plouff said he is “dedicated to helping improve the courses and curriculum and making them responsive to the needs of both students and local industry. In order to have continuous improvement, we need to measure student learning outcomes and assess them against both internal and external goals and standards. I’m looking forward to using those measurements to help foster curricular innovation.”

The Sebastian Chair is Grand Valley’s third fully endowed chair. It is named for James R. Sebastian, Sr., founder of Rapistan, a manufacturer of conveyor belt and materials handling systems that is now owned by Dematic, a multi-national company.  Plotkowski called Sebastian the “father of engineering at Grand Valley.”

“James Sebastian led the effort to introduce engineering at Grand Valley in the 1980s — and with an experiential cooperative component. Only a handful of programs in the country have cooperative real-world experience that is integrated and mandatory, and even fewer did so when Grand Valley’s program was founded. In that sense, he was a real visionary,” Plotkowski said.

The chair was funded by a long-term gift from James R. and Audrey M. Sebastian that has now matured. Endowed chairs at Grand Valley are established at a minimum level of $1.5 million.

“Our Dad was very committed to entrepreneurship, to engineering, and to the growth of our region,” said David Sebastian, executive director of the Sebastian Foundation.  “He was keen on the need for engineering education to have a practical component and be grounded by the realities of manufacturing. He knew that this would yield engineers who would be both creative and results-oriented.”

Plouff’s new position is one of several changes announced in the engineering program. Charlie Standridge is the new assistant dean of the Padnos College of Engineering and Computing, and Toma Hentea is the new director of the School of Engineering.

Plouff, Standridge and Hentea will be present at the School of Engineering's Senior Design Conference on Friday, August 1 from 1-5 p.m. in the Keller Engineering Laboratories Building in downtown Grand Rapids. On display will be projects with a combined materials value exceeding $160,500. The conference celebrates the successful completion of the Capstone Design Program, in which teams of senior engineering students solve real-world engineering design problems sponsored by participating industries and other sponsoring organizations. The projects take two semesters to complete, and at the end the companies who participate have an actual working product. This event is filled with compelling visuals and is open to media coverage.

The day culminates in the Order of the Engineer ceremony, which is a special commencement ritual for Engineering students. The graduates earn their degrees later in the year than the traditional spring ceremony because they must complete a year-long co-op experience. In the ceremony, each student receives an iron ring, placed on the little finger of the working hand, which symbolizes bridging the step between training and experience.