Partnerships will be an important avenue to increasing research efforts within UND’s engineering disciplines

John Watson, dean of the School of Engineering and Mines since July of 2001, is part of a new leadership cadre bringing changes to UND, the largest doctoral-research university in the region of the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

Watson, a U.S. citizen since 1991 whose accent reveals his early years in the United Kingdom, arrived in Grand Forks within months of three other new deans: Bruce Smith of Aerospace Sciences, Martha Potvin of Arts and Sciences, and Joseph Benoit of the Graduate School.

“All of us understand the importance of research in the modern educational environment,” he said recently when interviewed in his office at the Maxwell Upson Engineering Center. “In my case, however, it was made clear that I was hired in large part to increase the research profile of my school.”

Watson’s credentials are impeccable for such a task: degrees in metallurgy and materials, and industrial experience (including a four-year stint as a researcher with Rolls-Royce in the U.K.) before he entered academe. His higher education career has included positions in Australia, New Zealand, and, for 20 years, as professor and chair of metallurgical engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, that state’s premier technological university.

Watson’s own research record and capacity to attract external grant money have been remarkable, notes his boss, Provost John Ettling. The dean even holds a patent, No. 4,940,550, 1991, “Multi-Step Process for Concentrating Magnetic Particles in Waste Sludges.”

Research in the School of Engineering and Mines is hardly new, Watson hastens to add.

Slightly more than a century ago, the then-new school of mines began to conduct what would be the first organized research since the University’s founding in 1883. The topic: the nature, extent, and commercial viability of the state’s natural resources, particularly its vast reserves of lignite coal and clay.

But, Watson says, his school is best known for its teaching, consistently turning out graduates who achieve great success in business, industry and government.

With an enrollment of about 700, the school is relatively small compared to those at many state universities.

Programs include chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, environmental geosciences, geological engineering, geology, and mechanical engineering. The school offers an innovative distance education program, and, at the graduate level, a variety of programs leading to the Master of Engineering, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.

“In 1991, the school’s faculty devoted perhaps 80 percent of their time to teaching, 20 percent to research,” Watson said. “Our goal is to gradually move to a 60-40 split.”

The benefits of research are obvious even to faculty whose first love is teaching, he said. It’s a cliché, but true, he explains: Teaching is enhanced when students can be involved themselves in research – as they are, for example, in the AgCam project (see the article in this issue).

Part of the challenge, he says, is building the kind of infrastructure that is necessary these days to be competitive in attracting externally funded research. The EPSCoR program (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), funded by the federal government and the state to make North Dakota more competitive in attracting federal research dollars, has been important to the college. Since he arrived, two EPSCoR grants have been received to improve research laboratories, together with four “start-up” grants to enable the school to attract new faculty members with research interests.

Watson often mentions “collaboration” when discussing future research initiatives. Four obvious potential partners are the Energy and Environmental Research Center, the Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, the nearby U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center, and UND’s sister research university 70 miles to the south, North Dakota State University.

“Just consider the potential of the high selenium levels found in some North Dakota soils,” Watson said. “Wheat grown on this soil may have significant nutritional benefits for humans. I can envision a scenario in which all of us might be involved in exploring this topic, which could have enormous consequences for our region’s economy.”

Indeed. Earle J. Babcock, the school’s first dean who led the effort to build North Dakota’s coal industry, would have appreciated such an idea.