January 15, 2004

Zorowski Celebrates 50 Years Teaching Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Carl Zorowski shows one of his talking textbooks on CD-ROM, appropriately titled “Design for Strength and Endurance.”(Photo: Jon Pishney)

Dr. Carl Zorowski refuses to slow down.

After 50 years pushing innovative teaching methods in mechanical engineering, he’s got a right to. Instead, he’s designing distance education courses for the Web and CD-ROM and preaching revitalization of undergraduate education. Topping it all off, after a nearly 20-year hiatus he’s returning to the racetrack, tweaking his 36-horsepower Formula V to coax just a little more speed on the straightaways.

Whether he’s in a sports car or a classroom, Zorowski appears driven by two desires: have fun and push the limits.

Zorowski has been a member of the mechanical and aerospace engineering faculty at North Carolina State University since 1962. He has served as head of the department as well as associate dean of the College of Engineering, authored more than 80 publications and become an international authority on mechanical component and system design and on the mechanical properties of textile fibers.

Through it all, he has been repeatedly recognized by NC State and others for his teaching excellence, receiving two outstanding teacher awards from the university, as well as prestigious awards from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society for Engineering Education and the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. In 1999 he received the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal of Excellence — the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member by the university — for his career-long contributions to curriculum development, teaching, research and interdisciplinary programs.

Zorowski began his teaching career as a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon). In spring 1953, he stepped in to teach a senior aerospace course. “After a couple weeks in class I thought, hey, this is kind of fun, I think I’d like to go ahead and do this,” Zorowski said. By the time he joined the faculty at NC State as an associate professor in 1962, he already had received national attention for his teaching innovations.

In 1962, during his first year teaching at NC State, Dr. Zorowski (right) and a senior ME student get ready to test a prototype model of a centrifuge constructed of balsa wood. (Photo: College of Engineering archives, NC State University)

While at Carnegie, Zorowski and another faculty member began to incorporate a mechanical design competition in which seniors would have to build a prototype of their final project. This exercise not only provided a taste of the real world for these students but also developed a lot of interest from educators outside the institute. “I’m not sure anybody else was doing that sort of thing at the time,” he explained.

Zorowski incorporated senior design competitions into the curriculum upon his arrival at NC State as well. Recognizing the popularity of the practice, he wrote and received a National Science Foundation grant to build a workshop/laboratory so that students would have a place to create their prototypes. Zorowski noted that senior design competitions continue today in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department.

Zorowski’s program innovations have also won him acclaim. He initiated development of an interdisciplinary research program in fiber and textile mechanics, which resulted in his being named R. J. Reynolds Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 1969. He also directed a new interdisciplinary master’s degree program in Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering, which was awarded the prestigious LEAD (Leadership and Excellence in Application and Development) University Award by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in 1989.

More recently, working with Engineering Online, the college’s distance education program, he has developed a technique of course presentation he calls the “talking textbook” — a combination of CD-ROM and Web-delivered materials that specifically caters to continuing education and distance learning students.

Zorowski said he has had a lot of interesting and bright students in his 50 years of teaching — a key factor in his longevity. Continued challenge has also been critical. “One of the greatest challenges was to be able to teach in such a way that I could recognize that a light was going on inside a student’s head.” Engineering is almost like learning a foreign language, Zorowski said, in that students don’t really understand the language until they start to think in that language. Watching a student start to think like an engineer is the most satisfying aspect of teaching, he said. “Once you see that light go on, well, you know they’re on their way.”

Zorowski recently realized he had taught five generations of doctoral students (one of his PhD students advised another, who advised another …) who had gone into teaching. “That’s a real kick in the pants for me.”

His affect on other educators has also been significant. In 1993 Zorowski assumed direction of SUCCEED (Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education), a multi-million dollar National Science Foundation program geared toward revitalizing undergraduate education. The program has involved several hundred faculty — from NC State and seven other institutions — in experimental engineering courses and teaching techniques during the past 10 years. Due in large part to his leadership, the program has had a significant impact on undergraduate engineering education in the Southeast. Although Zorowski retired in 1997, he continues part time as director of assessment and evaluation for the coalition.

Zorowski said he plans to keep teaching as long as NC State will let him and as long as it’s fun. “I want to keep seeing that light go on.” As for racing, he has one more event to requalify for a track license and a return to the sport he loves. Zorowski’s appraisal of his latest outing was succinct and typical: “The old bones were a little sore, but the car ran great.”

— pishney —

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