First-Hand:History of an ASEE Fellow-Raymond G. Jacquot

Family:

My great grandfather emigrated from France to Illinois in 1862 just in time to be swept up in the US Civil War. In 1883 he moved to the Sand Hills of Nebraska to take advantage of homestead rights given to Civil War Vets and a career in farming and the grain markets. My dad was born in Nebraska and his father (my grandfather) moved the clan to Casper, Wyoming in 1923. I was fortunate to be educated and work almost my entire career in Wyoming which will always be home. Soon after enrolling in college I became enamored with rock and mountain climbing an avocation I pursued for nearly five decades, making many alpine ascents (some new) in the US Rockies, the Canadian Rockies and Peru. I will always be a climber at heart.

I married in 1972 and have one son, Byron, by that marriage. Byron is a software engineer with a degree in computer science practicing in the Denver area. The first marriage ended after 14 years and I was single for 16 years before remarrying to a high school classmate Janice in 2003. Life is good!

Education:

• 1956-1958 Casper College, Associate of Arts
• 1958-1960 University of Wyoming, B.S. Mechanical Engineering
• 1960-1962 University of Wyoming, M.S. Mechanical Engineering
• 1964-1969 Purdue University, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering
• 1976 Stanford University, Visiting Scholar in Aeronautics and Astronautics

Employment:

• 1960-1962 University of Wyoming, Supply Instructor of Mechanical Engineering
• 1962-1964 University of Wyoming, Instructor of Mechanical Engineering
• 1964-1965 Purdue University, Instructor of Mechanical Engineering
• 1965-1966 University of Wyoming, Graduate Assistant, Mechanical Engineering
• 1966-1969 Purdue University, N.S.F. Science Faculty Fellow
• 1969-1970 University of Wyoming, Supply Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering
• 1970-1973 University of Wyoming, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering
• 1973-1975 University of Wyoming, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering
• 1975-1977 University of Wyoming, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Electrical Engineering
• 1977-2001 University of Wyoming, Professor of Electrical Engineering
• 1986 University of California at Davis, Visiting Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• 2001-Present University of Wyoming, Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research and Scholarship:

I have a rather varied research and publication record addressing topics of vibration and structural dynamics, pattern recognition, probabilistic structural buckling, automatic control, real time signal processing, and engineering education. Along the way I published three textbooks in systems and digital control and a control system design software package. Lastly I co-published a review manual for the professional engineer’s exam in power engineering.

Philosophy of Engineering Education:

Fifty eight years ago when I was first getting started in the teaching business I found the going difficult but with some guidance from my mentors at the University of Wyoming I found that I could improve. The real awakening occurred when I first learned from Jim Stice about the use of instructional objectives to make it clear to my students what they needed to know and what they needed to do to demonstrate that knowledge.

A second light bulb came on when I attended a short course conducted Lee Harrisburger in which I learned about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and how students, even in a narrow engineering discipline, differ radically in their personalities and their preferred learning and problem-solving styles and how most of them differed in these two aspects from the faculty who were their teachers. This meant that one must mix up presentation modes so, hopefully, one can hit each student’s learning “sweet spot.”