By Jack McDonough

In the beginning, the Plastics Engineering curriculum was different. No textbooks. No teachers.

Well, not teachers in the traditional sense anyway. At least, that’s what George Goebel ’59 remembers.

“The Plastics Engineering curriculum was the only one being taught at Lowell Tech that did not have a textbook,” says Goebel, now director of Business Development for Tectron Metal Detection in Laguna Hills, Calif. “The other interesting thing was that there were no teachers.”

Actually, there was a teacher. His name was Russ Ehlers, the person who founded the Plastics Engineering Department and who today is remembered in the most glowing terms by those who knew and worked with him.

When Goebel says there were no teachers, he means that Ehlers’ style was more collegial than pedagogical.

“Russ developed the curriculum from scratch. There was no precedence from which to create a course; there wasn’t a plastics engineering curriculum anywhere. His policy was to have plastics engineers learn as much of the basic engineering, chemistry, mathematics and humanities as would fit into an eight-hour day – 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week.

“For the first two years, we studied everything except plastics. Once we knew everything else, it was time to learn plastics.”          

And students at Lowell have been doing just that for half a century. The University has conferred some 1,800 undergraduate and 800 graduate degrees in plastics engineering since the program was founded in 1954.

This spring, the department will host a gala social event and dinner in Boston to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Until the plastics program made its debut in the middle of the 20th century, textiles had been king in Lowell. In 1896, the Lowell Textile School was founded as a private institute to train workers in the state’s then-dominant industry. Twenty-two years later it became a state school, granting degrees in textile engineering and textile chemistry.

But, following the end of World War II, textile manufacturers began packing up their looms and moving to southern states where they could pay lower wages to a non-union labor force.  The demand for textile education in New England diminished dramatically.

Thus, in 1953 the school changed its name to Lowell Technological Institute and began offering courses in the traditional engineering disciplines. A portion of textile engineering became mechanical engineering, and textile chemistry became the chemistry department. Special programs were established in plastics, paper and leather.

A committee of businessmen and academics, formed to chart a course for plastics, recommended that the Institute form a Plastics Engineering Department. To set that plan in motion, they found and hired Russ Ehlers, a graduate of Wesleyan College who had earned a doctorate in physical chemistry from Yale.

Ehlers had worked for a textile company and then joined the A.C. Spark Plug Division of General Motors where he developed and patented formulations for the injection molding of ceramic powders into spark plugs. In the 1940s, he joined the U.S. Quartermaster Corps where he developed the first practical, lightweight body armor.

He came to Lowell in the fall of 1954 and spent much of the next 18 months rounding up supplies and putting together a curriculum.

One member of the committee that recommended the formation of a plastics department was Ralph Mondano, then with Raytheon, and now executive-in-residence and assistant to the Dean of Engineering.

“The most outstanding thing I remember about Russ Ehlers was his ability to mold groups of people into working teams,” Mondano says. “He was an outstanding person in that regard. He could put you to work because you just liked the guy.”

The department’s first laboratory was set up in the basement of Southwick Hall – where the Aramark dining facility is today. Two present faculty members who remember that lab are Profs. Nick Schott and Steve Orroth.

“We were always in the basement because of the heavy equipment and machinery we used,” says Schott. “Before they refurbished it years later, there were still signs on the pillars saying, ‘Plastics Labs.’ You could still read it in 1971, but they’ve since painted over it.”

“And,” adds Orroth, “if you open one of the utility closets around there you’ll still see an electrical circuit board that’s marked ‘Impco injection molding.’ That was our first plunger injection molder.”

In the summer of 1956, after doing everything alone for two years, Ehlers hired Ray Normandin. A Boston College graduate with a degree in chemistry, Ray had been teaching at a small college in New Hampshire.

George Goebel remembers him well.

“What was interesting about Ray being our only instructor aside from Dr. Ehlers,” he says, “was that Ray had a lot to learn about this new material called plastics, along with the rest of us. As Russ lectured from his notes and our new found textbook, Modern Plastics Encyclopedia, a free publication that came with a subscription to Modern Plastics Magazine, Ray sat in the lectures with us.

“The main difference between Ray and us was that he got paid and he gave the tests. We took them.”

But Normandin did more than give tests.

He developed all of the chemistry and materials aspects of the program, an influence still felt today as approximately one-quarter of the curriculum credits are chemistry and plastics materials courses.

Though the department was founded in 1954, plastics-related instruction did not actually begin until 1956, and classes were small. The first graduates, having transferred into the program from other areas, received their degrees in 1958.

During that time, Ehlers hired Henry Thomas. Described as a “seasoned professor and jack of all trades,” Thomas was credited with bringing a solid engineering and design focus to the department.

Ball Hall was completed in 1960, and the department’s labs and offices moved from Southwick Hall to the basement of the new building.

The department benefited in those early days from the generous support provided by the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). Ehlers was active in the organization and eventually became president of SPE’s Eastern New England section.

He was followed in that post by Ralph Mondano, who had a knack for getting industry people involved with the program, which led to job placements for graduates, updating of the curriculum, equipment and resin grants and scholarships.

In the mid ’60s, Ehlers hired Rudy Deanin, who had spent 20 years in industry – 13 with Allied Chemical and seven with DeBell and Richardson, the world’s largest plastics consulting company.

“When I came in, Ehlers, Normandin and Thomas were teaching all the department courses,” Deanin says. “The year that I applied for a job, the first big class was just coming through. They knew that three couldn’t handle it anymore, so they hired me to help out and develop a graduate program.”

Ehlers had a technique for attracting students, Deanin says.

“He’d put a newsletter in all the freshman mailboxes periodically telling how great the future was in plastics. It was just beginning to catch on then.”

Deanin is still in the first office he occupied 37 years ago – Ball 107 – a room he once shared with Henry Thomas and four others. Today he shares that space with Prof. Steve Grossman, who was hired 21 years ago as Deanin’s replacement in anticipation of his retirement.

At the age of 83, Deanin still teaches two courses and a seminar, and serves as a department graduate coordinator.

Others who joined the faculty in that era included Aldo Crugnola and Nick Schott, along with two graduates of the program, Steve Orroth and Steve Driscoll.

Crugnola, who was still completing his doctorate at MIT, helped Deanin with the newly established graduate program. In 1973, Crugnola succeeded Ehlers as chair of the Plastics Department, and eventually became dean of the College of Engineering.

It was during Crugnola’s chairmanship that plastics became an engineering department.

“In the early years,” he says, “we were a technology program and we had a very supportive industry advisory group.” But, he continues, it was clear that becoming an engineering program “would certainly elevate the prestige of the department.”

While some members of the advisory group were unconvinced, the move was championed by Ralph Mondano (“I made a lot of noise about the fact that we had to be accredited as an engineering department.”) and, most important, it enjoyed the unequivocal support of William T. Hogan, then dean of the College of Engineering.

So it was that in the mid ’70s, the plastics program became Plastics Engineering.

By the late 1970s, Ehlers had become the “elder statesman.” Ill health prompted his retirement in 1977 when he and his wife, Kathy, moved to North Carolina. In 1982, he was elected to the Society of the Plastics Industry Hall of Fame. He died in the summer of that year.

From the early days when, as George Goebel says, there were “no teachers,” the department today has 17 full-time faculty members and 30,000 square feet of laboratory space.

Department Chair Bob Malloy says, “The future looks bright. We’re building on the 50-year foundation laid down by the program founders and the senior faculty.”

He also points to the new generation of faculty — Steve McCarthy, Carol Barry, Joey Mead and David Kazmer — who, he says, “are doing innovative research and have been very successful in bringing in research funding and other industry support.

“As a result, we have more graduate research assistants and more research funding than ever.

“In fact,” says Malloy, “the department has been receiving unprecedented levels of support from our alumni and corporate friends over the past few years. The department has a number of new endowed scholarship funds and newly renovated laboratory facilities. The alumni and industry donations and assistance have allowed us to keep our extensive plastics processing, design and testing laboratory facilities stocked with the very latest equipment.

“Our large alumni base is the key to our future. The department’s reputation in industry, feedback regarding the program curriculum, student employment networking, research programs and development activities are all linked to our alumni base.

“Our 50th anniversary celebration will be a great opportunity for alumni, friends and faculty to come together and toast the accomplishments of the last half century.”

Steve Driscoll explains the reason for this close relationship among all members of the Plastics Engineering Department.

“There has never been a desk between students and faculty. We learned together and worked together and played together. This family atmosphere has been one of the nice things about being in this department.”

Department of Plastics Engineering Institute for Plastics Innovation Nanomanufacturing Center of Excellence The Boston Globe: Pushing Plastics

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