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As the College of Engineering and Computing celebrates Innovation Week, ����AV President Gregory Washington talks about why he chose to pursue engineering, how being an engineer informs his role as university president, and his induction into the National Academy of Engineering.

What did it mean to you to be inducted into the National Academy of Engineering?

It’s a crowning achievement for any engineer. Such a low percentage of engineers get the honor, so it’s basically a recognition that I achieved what I wanted to achieve in terms of being an engineer, in terms of contributing to the field, bettering the field, bettering students who are coming in behind me. I’m just thankful that I got an opportunity to be a part of it.

Have you always been fascinated with how things work?

My mother [Elouise Chisolm] would tell me the story that it was hard buying toys for me as a kid because she would buy them and I would take them apart. Sometimes I would put them back together differently. It became so frustrating to her. It got to the point where she would only buy Tonka trucks—they were rugged and made from steel. Until I figured out a way to take those apart. And somebody—I think it was an off-the-cuff comment—said, “Maybe he’s an engineer.”

What role did a teacher have in your going into education and a STEM field?

Everything, to this day. Her name is Ms. [Elizabeth] Woolard. It was because of her that I pursued STEM. STEM was not my favorite subject in high school. English was. I could quote “The Canterbury Tales” scripture and verse, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven.” I was a big history guy. The STEM stuff was not front and center for me. One day Ms. Woolard got into a car accident right outside my high school. She had a tape measure in her car. She measured the skid marks, assumed the coefficient of friction for the vehicle, and sat there in front of the police officer and drew out the minimum speed that this guy could have been going when he hit her, which was well above the speed limit. The police officer gave him the ticket. I was sold. So I started looking at physics as a major, and that led me to engineering.

Teachers have a profound impact on the lives of their students and a profound impact on the directions in which they go in life. I recognized that then in myself, and I always carry that with me in the classroom: There's somebody in this class that you can ignite a fire in. And once that fire is lit, it's lit for life. I always wanted to be that for somebody else. There’s no more powerful force on Earth than a teacher.

You had another experience that influenced your career choice.

In the summers in high school, we would haul bricks for brick masons, mix and haul the cement that they would use to lay bricks. It was hot, backbreaking work out in the middle of nowhere. There was a trailer on the site, and the guy would come out and chum it up with the brick masons and go back into the air conditioning. And I finally asked a brick mason, “Who's that?” He said, “Oh, it’s the engineer.” I knew he had something to do with the design of the project. But the fact that he got to live so comfortably, and all I was familiar with in my life was hard work. That was what my parents did. Everybody had that hard work. And then here’s a guy sitting in a little room, and then they told me he made much more money than anybody else out there. I'm like, OK, that’s it. That’s the job for me. These stories didn't seem like much back then, but in hindsight, those little episodes and those experiences in life mean a great deal.

How did you get interested in smart materials and systems?

When I was in college, I read an article that basically said that there were these materials that can change their phase, meaning, there were liquids that can transform from a liquid to a solid with the application of a magnetic or electric field. And I immediately thought about [the movie] Terminator 2, with the robot whose body could go from a liquid to a solid. I began to research all of these materials, and I started using them to solve problems for government, automotive, and all kinds of industrial applications. These materials, they can move, they can flex, they can bend, they can apply force on a structure. It allowed you to be both creative and practical.

As a faculty member and dean, how did you prioritize providing opportunities to people from underrepresented groups?

That old adage, that talent is distributed equally and opportunity is not, is really true. If you can just expose people and give them opportunities to see the benefit of this stuff, you will capture more of them.

Starting as an undergraduate student at NC State, I had a little set of demos that we put together that highlights certain aspects of physics and certain aspects of chemistry. And we would go into middle schools and just get the kids all enthusiastic about science, technology, engineering, and math. And then figure out ways to help them do better in the classroom. Most of the time they were just doing formulas, and they didn't see how it related to the real world.

And then, when I became a professor, I had a whole section in my lab set up that was just demos. And every year we’d bring high school students in and have them tinker with things. That led to the development of curriculum and a partnership with an organization called the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We started developing kits for them to learn on their own and go out and do things. All with the hopes that they would eventually get turned on to the field and then become scientists and engineers.

When I came here as president after being at the University of California, Irvine, I met somebody here who was in California as a young person and had gone to one of my classes in high school and then went to Irvine and got a degree. Later on in life you get old enough where you can see where those seeds fall.

What about faculty recruitment from underrepresented groups?

We’re in a global race, and when you’re in a global race, you need all hands on deck. If I took a picture of everybody in a room, and you were part of that, and I handed you that photograph, the first person you’d look at is yourself. For me, there were too many photographs being taken that didn't have everybody in the picture. And so one of the things that I've always tried to do is find opportunities for women, find opportunities for people of color in the engineering discipline. I also know the outcomes when you see a faculty member who looks like you in the classroom. I hire a female faculty member, all of a sudden you look up and she has four or five female graduate students in her group. It happens because she becomes a role model for them. And the same thing for people of color.

Mason is No. 1 in Virginia for awarding engineering bachelor’s degrees to underrepresented minorities. How great of a factor was Mason’s overall mission of access for you in pursuing the presidency here?

It was critical. It was one of the most important factors. If we can do this successfully and continue to do this successfully at Mason, we have a real opportunity to be one of the reasons for changing the course of success in this whole country. The reality is 85% of our gross domestic product directly correlates to science and technology. And if we can produce more scientists and more engineers, we're going to be more dominant as a country in the future. It's going to come down to people at some point—the countries who have the smartest, most educated people, especially in those areas. Though not exclusively those. Now you have to couple that with a real understanding of the humanities and a real understanding of the arts and of creativity. Because as we continue to progress as a country, we are creating as many challenges as we are solving. Technologists ask the question, “Can I?” The humanist asks the question, “Should I?” You need those pieces together so that the real question becomes, ‘How should I?’

How does your engineering background help you as president of Mason?

Engineering is based on data and problem solving; thus I use it quite a bit, to the benefit of many and to the detriment of others. The numbers are always there, and they’re helpful, but they become one part of the overall solution in terms of helping you get there, not the sole part. It gives you a foundation to figure out the direction you should go. I'm surprised at how many times people will pursue a solution and not have looked at the basic underlying data behind that solution. And because of it, they come up with a totally different answer.

You’ve said the Mason story is your story. How so?

The Mason story is one of access. It’s one of finding opportunities for people, positioning them for success. I grew up a really poor kid. So the idea that I would somehow wind up at one of the nation’s best colleges and universities as a professor is nontrivial. I can’t count any other professors who came from my neighborhood, let alone a college president. So an institution that provides people with a pathway for getting out of those kinds of situations? That’s an institution I want to be a part of. That’s the Mason story.

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