First-Hand:History of an ASEE Fellow - Larry G. Richards

Birthplace: Flint, Michigan

Birthdate: April 13, 1942

Family

I grew up in Flint, Michigan - the oldest of six children (five boys, one girl). I was born while my father was in the military so I was an only child for a few years, and remember my mother reading to me every evening. I love books and have enjoyed reading all my life.

Flint was a car town, and most of my family worked for General Motors. I am one of the few people I knew growing up who did not spend their entire working lives in the auto industry. My father was a plant supervisor; my uncle was a Chief Engineer, and my Grandfather was an executive at Buick. And all my brothers worked for GM throughout their careers. Only my sister escaped but her husband was employed at Delphi – a GM contractor.

My father’s side of the family was of Polish and Romanian descent. Before the Great Depression, they were young professionals in Chicago. The bad economy and discrimination drove them away. They moved to Flint, and he found a job delivering industrial products. They had four children: the oldest Rick was killed in the Pacific theater in World War II. My dad and his two sisters prospered in Flint after the war, and Rick’s widow and son moved to Wisconsin.

My mother’s side of the family was of English and German descent. George Boysen was an executive with General Motors, and for a brief time served as mayor of Flint, Michigan. When he was sent to California to open a new factory in Los Angeles, my family drove cross-country to visit him. I have wonderful memories of LA, the sun, the beaches, and their bungalow house on Van Nuys Blvd. Eventually they came back to Flint and lived a few blocks from our growing family.

I met my wife Meredith while we were both graduate students in Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She had grown up in Houston and attended the University of Colorado. We just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. Meredith is an activist, a politician (she served on Charlottesville City Council and ran for Congress), and rail advocate. Our son Russell is an artist and film maker living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia. He attended Parsons and the School of Visual Arts in New York and graduated from the University of Maryland.

Education

I attended public schools in Flint Michigan: Garfield Elementary, Emerson Junior High and Flint Northern High School. Even before Sputnik, the public schools seemed well-funded; they certainly had an impressive science and math curriculum. A few memories and teachers stand out.

In the sixth grade, my science class did not cover astronomy. When I expressed my disappointment, Mrs. Joseph brought in six astronomy books from her personal collection. After finishing them, I read every book about the stars and solar system in our public library. On the first day of my eighth grade English class, the instructor gave an assignment on some obscure grammatical topic. I was totally lost, but the resources of the school library allowed me to understand the topic and complete the required three page paper. However, I was the only student who completed the assignment. Mr Booker called me to his office after class and handed me a library pass. He had decided there was no point in my sitting through his class. If I spent the time in the library and stayed out of trouble, I would get an A for the class.

In high school, everyone had to take shop classes as well as academic subjects so I took woodshop, metal shop, and cooking. I regret that I didn’t take typing; but since I was on a college track, my guidance counselor said I would not need typing and taking it would lower my GPA. So I learned keyboarding at the age of 50 when I had to start typing my own papers.

I attended Flint Junior College for two years, where I enjoyed small classes and excellent teachers. I majored in psychology and mathematics, and took several courses in philosophy. Two teachers influenced me greatly: E. G. Rodgers, a clinical psychologist, and philosopher James Leach. Both provided a level of intellectual challenge and personal attention that shaped my subsequent studies. When I transferred to Michigan State University, I was admitted to the Honors College: that meant that I could design my own major, and take any classes I chose. In my senior year I was told I needed to decide on a major for graduation. I had met the requirements for degrees in Psychology, Philosophy and Mathematics. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 1964 and was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.

I had not seriously considered what I would do after graduating until my senior year. I was walking back from an evening class during a major snow storm when a car stopped and the driver offered me a ride. We talked about my major and vague future plans. When he dropped me off, the driver asked me to come by his office the next day. When I arrived at the Psychology Research Building, Charles Wrigley had a list of seven graduate schools I should apply to. In those days, most graduate schools offered great financial aid packages. My best offer came from Michigan State, but Charles said I should not accept it. He was opposed to getting advanced degrees from your undergraduate school, and he said Illinois had the best program in Quantitative Psychology in the country.

I earned my PhD in Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with Ledyard R Tucker as my advisor, and studied with many exceptional professors (including Don Dulany, Charles Osgood, Ray Frankmann, and Harold Hake). At Illinois, I was a Teaching Assistant for graduate statistics under the guidance of Bill Batchelder and William Bogartz. The department had a requirement that every PhD student had to serve as a GTA for a full year. If you planned an academic career, you needed to learn how to teach.

Employment

I had a variety of jobs before college; two stand out: I worked at WBBC radio station as an announcer, newscaster, and disk jockey. I had the midnight to 6 AM schedule Thursday through Sunday nights. I also worked as a DJ at parties and special events, and did various tasks for the station (such as escorting the Miracles around Flint and visiting all the major record shops). This was the early days of Motown when their major acts were just getting started (little Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells and Gladys Knight). I still love the music, and play it on my iPod at the gym.

For two summers, I worked in the auto industry (AC Spark Plugs and Buick Motor Company). Since I was a temporary employee, the union rules didn’t apply to me even though I was a member of the UAW. So I was able to work two shifts most days of the week and stashed away more than enough money to get me through the subsequent academic year. My supervisors predicted a bright future for me in the auto industry, but I knew it was not for me.

I came to the University of Virginia in 1969 to teach statistics and quantitative methods in the Department of Psychology. In my first semester at UVA, I was approached by aerospace engineer Ira Jacobson about consulting on a research project on passenger acceptance of aircraft environments. I joined Ira and Bob Kuhlthau for a collaboration that lasted until 1980. The team, which later included Lester Hoel and Richard Pepler of Dunlap and Associates, produced influential technical reports for NASA and US DOT, and many articles for major academic journals. This work had major impacts on transportation policy and the design of vehicles and facilities, and the academic papers are cited to this day. I have fond memories of flying with ride-quality measuring equipment on all types of aircraft, from small planes landing in thunderstorms at Logan airport to flights on the Air France Concorde to Paris and Rio.

In 1980, I joined the Office of Dean of Engineering Jack Gibson and served as Executive Director of a consortium of twelve major universities focused on integrating Computer Graphics and CAD/CAM into engineering education. This was one of NSF’s first funding efforts in engineering education. We revolutionized the curriculum in mechanical engineering and changed how students thought about design. I also helped found the A. H. Small Center for Computer Aided Engineering and served as its Director from 1992 to 2002

At the invitation of MAE Chair, Miles Townsend, I moved to the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1985 to develop and administer a new Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program. This Master’s Degree program was offered statewide as part of the Commonwealth Graduate Engineering Program (CGEP) and reached hundreds of off-grounds students through distance learning as well as those in residence at UVA. I served as faculty representative to the CGEP Advisory Board from 2003 – 2009. In 2010, I developed an asynchronous on-line version of my graduate course: Statistics for Engineers and Scientists. I have taught at all academic levels, from first year engineering and computing to graduate courses on Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing, Creativity and New Product Development, Statistics for Engineers, and short courses for industry. I am a member of UVA’s Academy of Teaching.

Research and Scholarship

My publications include articles on individual differences in perception and cognition, statistics, passenger reactions to transportation systems, traveler safety and security, computer aided design and manufacturing, case studies of entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking, and innovative methods to improve engineering education.

My earliest research concerned individual differences in human perception and cognition. That work drove home the many dimensions of human variability – including what we now call learning styles or thinking styles. The verbal/visual thinking distinction was most prominent, as was a person’s ability to handle complexity.

When I got involved with passenger acceptance of public transportation systems and the design of such systems for safety and security, we had an entirely different audience for our results. We did publish in journals and conferences, but the real impact came through technical reports distributed to government agencies, regulators and decision–makers, and confidential presentations to key personnel within an agency or company.

My work in engineering education has resulted from classroom experiences – both as a student and as a teacher. I consider every class (and course) an experiment and conduct multiple assessments in each. I also observe others teaching and note what works and what doesn’t!

Philosophy of Engineering Education

In high school, I helped friends with math homework and learned to explain concepts and methods to students who did not learn math easily. In college, I worked as a math tutor for the hockey team and various other students. I learned to recognize what each person knew and to identify their conceptual misunderstandings, so I could relate the new material to something familiar. My research and everyday experience have taught me the importance of individual differences in education: students differ in many ways: levels of preparation, study habits, intellectual skills and talents, learning styles, and motivation. But all can learn if the material is well taught with attention to the needs of the students. Every student matters! Some will take longer to master the material, but most can achieve mastery eventually.

As a student, I experienced classes of all types and sizes. I learned the most in classes where the teacher knew who I was; small classes with personal attention are clearly best. I discovered what the leaders in engineering education (Karl Smith and Rich Felder) already knew: active cooperative learning works best. Large lecture classes require extraordinary effort and creativity to make them effective.

Education should be accessible to all whenever they need it. Universities should be leaders in lifelong learning – providing remedial instruction as well as advanced degrees. For several years in the 1980’s I taught computer aided design to engineers working in industry. They had gotten their education before computers were integral to engineering education and practice. Now the company needed engineers with advanced computer skills. They decided to provide on-site education for their current employees, rather than hire a bunch of recent graduates. The experienced engineers knew all about the company, its products and its culture; all they needed was to have an educational gap filled in.

The most important skills we should be teaching our students are not how to do well in traditional classes but rather how to succeed in an ever-changing world by applying deign thinking to their lives and careers. They should be learning how to generate novel ideas (creativity), how to question accepted practices (critical thinking), how to effectively communicate their ideas (persuasion), how to follow-through (persistence), and how to prosper in uncertain situations (entrepreneurship). And most important, how to learn what they need to know when they need to know it!

Finally I believe in the land grant philosophy for higher education. The University is more than just a campus: it should be part of its community – a local, state, and national resource. We must reach out to our communities and accommodate adult learners, precollege students, part time students, and folks from industry who need to catch up on the latest technologies.

ASEE Activities

I have been a member of the American Society for Engineering Education since 1993. My primary affiliation is with the Educational Research and Methods Division, but I am also active in Design in Engineering Education, Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation, and First-Year Programs. I was a founding member of the Pre-College Engineering Education Division, and have served on the Boards of ERM, Entrepreneurship, and K‒12 Divisions; Program Chair for ERM (2002 Montreal) and K-12 (2005 Portland OR) for the ASEE Annual Conference; and Division Chair of ERM from 2005 to 2007. I am an Associate Editor of Advances in Engineering Education (since 2011). I was ERM Program Chair for FIE 1999 in Puerto Rico, and General Chair for FIE 2010 – the 40th Anniversary Frontiers in Education conference - held in Arlington Virginia in October 2010, and hosted by UVA and Virginia Tech. I am a Fellow and Life Member of ASEE, and have served as the UVA ASEE Campus Representative for as long as I can remember.

ASEE K‒12 Annual Workshop – I served on the committee that founded this workshop in 2002 and have participated every year since. The workshop is held prior to the annual conference and is aimed at teachers and school administrators from the local school districts.

Other Professional Activities

Since 2002, I have focused on outreach to K-12 students and teachers, working with local schools and presenting teacher workshops both statewide and nationally. I serve on the Board of the Public Education Foundation of Charlottesville-Albemarle. I am a member of the National Science Teachers’ Association (NSTA), and collaborate with the Curry School of Education at UVA to bring engineering concepts and methods into science and math education.

I also conduct outreach programs for middle and high school students, including an annual event, “Females Advancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,” sponsored by the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, which draws over 700 middle school girls from Southwest Virginia; and BLAST Summer Program for High School Students (Virginia Space Grant Consortium), this program brings 160 high school students to UVA each summer to experience science and engineering activities.