Fall 2019 CHEE Class Notes

Michael Schwimmer

Class of 1969, BS in Chemical Engineering
khunmikesan@gmail.com

I wish I could visit with classmates during our special reunion. Nov. 1 will find me and Faye (BA psychology, 1978) sailing from Rome on route to Fort Lauderdale.

After a nomadic career, mostly with Chevron, we’re back in Georgetown, Texas (near Austin), to enjoy our twin grandsons, Isaac and Ilan, who are 17 months and growing. [Ed. note: See photo at top of page.] I retired from Chevron in 2009.

Our best wishes for a happy reunion and safe, healthy lives.

Nick Schott

Class of 1971, PhD in Chemical Engineering
jeanschott@aol.com

After graduating with my PhD, I started my career as a professor of plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (then the Lowell Technological Institute). My wife is also a UA graduate, with an MS in Spanish in 1969.

I progressed through the ranks and served as the department chair for 18 years. Plastics engineering was the first department to be ABET accredited, in 1977. I specialized in teaching and research in the areas of plastics processing, process control, product design and mold design. I had to teach the courses that were required for accreditation but for which I found no other qualified professors.

I retired in 2010 and have been active as an emeritus professor for the past seven years. Last year my wife, Jean, and I downsized and sold our house in Westford, Massachusetts, and moved to a cottage on Cape Cod, which is two and a half hours away by car.

I had a very rewarding career as a professor and had many opportunities for worldwide professional travel to many countries, including India, China, Japan, the UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Mexico, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Honduras, Venezuela and others.

Living in retirement on Cape Cod, I have volunteered at the Chatham Marconi-RCA Wireless Museum, which celebrated 100 years of wireless communication this year. I have also joined a men's club and may do more volunteer work. For the past three years, we have mainly traveled on the East Coast where we have many relatives. We are still in reasonable health even though the big 80 is looming for me later this year.

Looking back on my career, I have an anecdote where a UMass co-worker told me that the only reason that I got into graduate school at the UA was because Dr. Don White had a quota to take two hippies from UC Berkeley (Dr. John Heibel was the other UC Berkeley alum who started with me in the fall of 1965).

My academic career as a professor was also a matter of luck. I heard from professor Carl "Speed" Marvel of the UA chemistry department that his former student, professor Rudolph Deanin, was looking for a world-famous professor to teach plastics processing theory in Massachusetts. I wrote him and he stopped at the Tucson airport to interview me while he was going to Los Angeles for an American Chemical Society meeting. Professor Deanin loved to travel in Europe, particularly Switzerland. He subscribed to a magazine, German Life. The inside cover of the magazine showed a picture of the inside of a refrigerator door with a bottle of German wine and a little German in lederhosen standing next to it. The ad said, “Take home a little German.” I was that little German, and that was our little joke about how I got to UMass Lowell. Professor Deanin had looked far and wide but could only afford me as an instructor in 1971.

We have three children and six grandchildren. My son, Richard, and his wife, Saori, have three kids. He is retired military (U.S. Army) and lives outside of Fort Riley, Kansas. Our daughter Raquel is married to Justin Tiernan, no children, works for Boston University in web design. Our youngest daughter, Jennifer, is divorced and has three children. She lives in our former town of Westford, Massachusetts.

Paul Wood

Class of 1984, BS in Chemical Engineering
pwood@lan-inc.com

I was the symposium chair for the Water Environment Federation’s Nutrient Removal and Recovery Symposium 2019, held in Minneapolis July 23-25. This symposium brings together researchers, engineers and operators for water resource recovery to discuss and learn about the current practice and research for dealing with nutrients such as ammonia and phosphorus in wastewater.

I am a senior associate at Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam Inc. and the chief process engineer for water and wastewater projects.

Derek Lewis

Class of 1995, BS in Chemical Engineering
dlewis@castleray.com

Since graduating from the University of Arizona with honors in 1995 and receiving the UA Freeman Medal, I’ve started two companies. I started my current diversified manufacturing business 14 years ago. During that time, we’ve grown to employ 450 people in 12 facilities nationwide manufacturing and selling products in the health care, law enforcement and specialty tools sectors. I received my second degree at Harvard in business. I live in Dallas with my wife and three kids.

Arturo Ruiz

Class of 1997, BS in Chemical Engineering
Class of 2003, PhD in Chemical Engineering

Arturo Ruiz, a substrate packaging R&D engineer at Intel Corp., teamed up with four Intel colleagues to launch Desert Monks Brewing Company. Ruiz is the driving force behind the creations that have put Desert Monks on the map – beer made with ingredients such as tangerines, hibiscus, Oreos, cherries, guava and chiles.

Juan Sandoval

Class of 2016, BS in Chemical Engineering
jjsandoval447@gmail.com

I hope all my classmates are doing well, and students are keeping the faculty on their toes.

Shortly after graduation, I joined Merck’s Leadership Development Program, a three-year rotational program. My first role was as a business consultant in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. I was responsible for lean strategy and process stability for several sites in North America.

My second role was in our Animal Health Franchise as an improvement engineer in Salamanca, Spain, working in packaging and documentation review.

My third role was in our Small Molecule Franchise as a manufacturing supervisor in Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, responsible for producing Janumet XR, our largest SM product.

Merck’s rotational program was a perfect fit, allowing me to fully utilize my diverse academic background in various areas of technology and management while also having the opportunity to feed my passion for traveling.

Throughout the past three years, I have had to opportunity to travel to 70% of the U.S. East Coast and 17 countries. Having the opportunity to work in Spanish-speaking regions for the past two years granted me the opportunity to develop my Spanish communication skills professionally and learn about the rich Hispanic culture from Spain to Latin America.

I thank the UA Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering for their great preparation through teaching and mentorship.