Biography
The nitty-gritty details — my education, where I taught and when, some awards, and some miscellaneous stuff I did – are listed below the doggie photos.
My post-retirement walking buddies, Gwynie, Maggie, and Leah are shown here and have a page of their own you can visit. Gwynie is the walking champ; I estimate we walked at least 12,000 miles together.
With my son Randy and my daughter Linda, I built my own house – and still live there with my wife Rosemarie, who has contributed significantly to the finishing, the many changes, the additions, the maintenance, and interior decorating.
Honors and Awards
The John R. Dixon Fellowship
Established by a gift to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, from my former graduate students Steve Luby and Ralph Verrilli, the Fellowship supports graduate students in Mechanical Engineering. Luby and Verrilli went beyond Luby’s M.S. thesis and built software for the design of composites. They sold the software to Sikorsky, Boeing, and others. Their very successful business was called Vistagy before they sold it to Siemens.
Ralph Coates Roe Award
American Society for Engineering Education
Mechanical Engineering Division, 1976
“An outstanding teacher of mechanical engineering who has made notable contributions to the engineering profession.”
Outstanding Educator Award
ASME International, 1998
“In recognition of your contributions to furthering engineering design education through your vision, interactions with students and industry, your school scholarship, your profound impact on the next generation of engineers, and as a role model for other educators.”
Registered Professional Engineer
Massachusetts, 1981
Commencement Speaker
Frontier Regional High School, 2005
Great fun! Remember the moral is It’s really a good idea to show up. Then a father shouts: “You got that right”. It ends with the waving of a light sword, and “May the Force Be With You!”
Military
U. S. Army 1953-55
Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) Operator.
Fort Rucker, Alabama. “Home of Army Aviation.”
Education
M.I.T.
B.S. and M.S……1952-53 ……Mechanical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Ph. D…….1961……Mechanical Engineering
Real World Experience
Plant Engineer, Jarl Extrusions, Rochester, NY……1955-57
Engineer, Jos. Kaye Company, Cambridge, MA……1957-58
Business Attempts
Dixon Energy Systems. Solar hot water systems, heat pumps, and heat recovery. 1976-81. Closed when I ran out of money and energy. And I wasn’t tough enough for such a business.
ProAccord. Mediation. I was trained in mediation at Endispute in Boston. ProAccord failed to attract customers, and lawyers hate mediators!
Government
Program Director for Engineering Design, National Science Foundation, 1988-89.
Member, Committee on Engineering Design, National Research Council, 1989-90. Book Produced – Improving Engineering Design: Designing for Competitive Advantage, 1990.
Op-Ed Articles for the Berkshire Eagle
In the 1975-76 time frame, and again circa 1991, I wrote several dozen Op-Ed articles for the Berkshire Eagle newspaper. The main subject was energy, but articles also ventured into education, environment, and government policy. There were even a couple of book reviews (e.g., Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). Mostly, though, I wrote about things like electric cars, environmental costs and risks, nukes vs global warming, assessing the greenhouse risk, and the like.
The Lost Mission of Engineering
The first paper I wrote after publishing my Ph. D. dissertation was “The Lost Mission of Engineering”. It was published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 1963. In the article I argued that engineers and engineering researchers should be working, not on mundane products or processes, but on the important problems of mankind like food, air and water pollution, transportation, communication, education, problems of old age, and the like. The paper was well received; I got complimentary letters from college presidents (e.g., Notre Dame, Purdue) many faculty, and even industry people. At the time, there were few jobs for engineers on such important-to-mankind problems. Fortunately today, the mission of engineering has been found and there are many important and useful things for engineers to do.
Academic Experience
| Teaching Assistant | M.I.T. | 1952-53 |
| Instructor | Carnegie Mellon University | 1958-60 |
| Assistant Professor | Carnegie Mellon University | 1960-61 |
| Associate Professor | Purdue University | 1961-64 |
| Associate Professor | Swarthmore College | 1964-66 |
| Professor and Department Head | UMass Amherst | 1966-71 |
| Professor | UMass Amherst | 1971-93 |
John R. Dixon 