Gordon Institute saluted for educating engineering leaders

The Gordon Institute at Tufts will receive one of the engineering profession’s highest honors on February 20, when the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) recognizes the institute’s M.S. program in engineering management for guiding promising engineers into leadership roles.

Arthur W. Winston

Harold S. Goldberg, Jerome E. Levy and Arthur W. Winston will share the Bernard M. Gordon Prize, a $500,000 award given annually by the NAE to recognize innovation in engineering and technology education.

Conceived and funded by Bernard M. Gordon, H92, a former Tufts trustee, the Gordon Institute graduated its first class in 1987. Goldberg shepherded the concept for the institute through the evaluation and acceptance phases and obtained a charter. He and Levy led the development of the curriculum and recruited faculty. Winston, director of the Gordon Institute, worked with Goldberg and Levy to define the mission, curriculum and policies of the institute and to prepare it for accreditation.

This degree program, designed for practicing engineers with industrial experience, emphasizes project management skills, product innovation and development, communication and team leadership. The degree program also includes courses on advanced technical topics and the human factors that influence relationships with colleagues, employees and business management personnel.

Gordon Institute students complete individual projects at their workplace, such as the design and manufacture of high-fidelity audio speakers or the development of a gas turbine engine. Teams of students must also complete a consulting project known as the practicum.

Winston led the transition for the institute joining with Tufts School of Engineering in 1992 and the program’s transformation from a one-year, full-time program to a two-year program with Friday and Saturday classes. That change made the program more attractive to working engineering professionals and to organizations that might sponsor students.

The National Academy of Engineering will award the Gordon Prize and its two other highest prizes at the dinner in Washington, D.C., on February 20. Timothy J. Berners-Lee, who holds the 3Com Founders Chair at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, will receive the Charles Stark Draper Prize for developing the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee gave the Richard E. Snyder Presidential Lecture at Tufts in March 2006. Yuan-Cheng “Bert” Fung, known as the father of modern biomechanics for pioneering the application of quantitative and analytical engineering principles to the study of the human body and disease, will receive the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize for opening new frontiers in medical research.