News and Events - Design
Engineering Center Named For Thomas P. Hosmer '58
|
Tom Hosmer examines equipment in the Thomas
P. Hosmer '58 Design Engineer Center |
University of Maine Mechanical Engineering
seniors have a place where they can design and construct real
projects thanks to an alumnus who says this hands-on experience
enables students to hone their creative skills and to better
understand the manufacturing process.
"If you design something that can't be readily
made, it's useless," says Thomas Hosmer, 71, of Concord, Mass.,
who earned a Mechanical Engineering degree in 1958. It was his
idea in 2004 to establish a design engineering center in Crosby
Hall and he has been supporting the facility ever since through an
endowed fund that enables the department to upgrade and maintain
the equipment and purchase supplies to enhance students'
experience.
In recognition of Hosmer's generous
contributions, the Thomas P. Hosmer '58 Design Engineering Center
was dedicated last April.
Since opening in 2006, the Center has been a
constant beehive of activity, providing students with a well
equipped, up-to-date space where they work in teams to make sure
that a particular machine functions the way it's supposed to.
Students may be required to improve the device or even develop a
brand new contraption, all the while testing, critiquing and
evaluating its performance.
"Engineers solve problems for a living, so
it's absolutely vital that students have this experience," says
Dana Humphrey, dean of the UMaine College of Engineering.
At one time, students had to work on their senior projects
wherever they could find room, he recalled.
"Now here's this wonderful space where they
can go to work both on the design and the fabrication of a project
and to enhance their team building skills."
Professor Donald Grant, chairman of the
Mechanical Engineering department, says students enjoy doing
analytical analyses with state-of-the art computers.
"This facility allows them to excel."
A consulting engineer for Arthur D. Little in
Cambridge, Mass., from 1965 to 2000, Hosmer has maintained ties
with UMaine over the years, serving on the Mechanical Engineering
Department's advisory committee and speaking regularly to students
about projects he has designed and about his illustrious career.
UMaine gave him a great foundation and prepared him well for the
future, he tells them.
"I worked for an internationally famous firm,
full of graduates from prestigious schools and I never had any
trouble keeping up with them," he points out.
Hosmer says he was spurred to establish the
center at UMaine after seeing one at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
"UMaine needs one of these," Hosmer recalled
thinking.
After learning that the College of Engineering
had, in fact, set aside space for just such a facility, he decided
the time had come to furnish it so UMaine Mechanical Engineering
seniors could have the opportunity to apply the principles they
learned in their first three years and gain a working knowledge of
manufacturing processes and equipment.
"Maine engineers have always had a reputation
for a practical, competent approach," he says. "We've never
hesitated to reach out and get our hands dirty. We've never been
timid about walking into a machine shop or fabrication shop and
talking to the machinist and welder.
"This is the kind of experience it takes so
that can continue."
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