Fund created to honor former Rice engineering professors

Fund created to honor former Rice engineering professors

BY MICHELE ARNOLD
Special to the Rice News

For part of his time as an undergraduate at Rice University, Al Hirshberg ’82 had a key to mechanical engineering professor Paul Paslay’s house, where he came and went as it suited him. It was an arrangement that worked for both: Paslay needed part-time help with several engineering projects and Hirshberg wanted to get some real-world engineering experience working under the tutelage of a world-class practitioner. In addition to being an adjunct professor at the time, Paslay was a consultant with ExxonMobil as a client. That connection, and Paslay’s mentoring, would prove pivotal to Hirshberg’s future.

Al Hirshberg

Enrique Barrera, professor and chair of mechanical engineering and materials science; Alan Chapman ’45, the Harry S. Cameron Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering; Franz Brotzen, the Stanley C. Moore Professor Emeritus of Materials Science; Paslay and his wife, Charlotte, gathered at Cohen House last month to celebrate the creation of the Paul R. Paslay Endowed Excellence Fund.

Paul Paslay

The new fund allows tenured and tenure-track faculty in mechanical engineering and materials science to seek funds for innovative projects that enhance existing mechanical engineering and materials science programs or jump-start new ones and enhance student learning. Proposals that build community are of high interest.

Hirshberg and his wife, Suzy ’84, said they created this fund to honor the professor who strongly influenced the course of Hirshberg’s life.

In 1982 Paslay encouraged Hirshberg, who had just completed his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering, to approach ExxonMobil about a summer internship that would simultaneously advance an ExxonMobil innovation in deepwater offshore pipelines and allow Hirshberg to complete his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in one year by using his real-world work at ExxonMobil to jump-start his master’s thesis.

Hirshberg is again working on innovations in the engineering and construction of technically challenging offshore developments with his recent appointment to the position of Deepwater Africa Project Executive at ExxonMobil.

“Paslay’s suggestion to convince ExxonMobil to sponsor me for a summer project that would also serve as my thesis topic was an ingenious way to convince me to return to graduate school that I never could have thought up on my own at that point in my life,” Hirshberg said. “Later, when ExxonMobil offered me a starting job at their Houston research center just a few miles away from Rice, I informed Dr. Paslay that I was planning to accept a job at a small consulting company instead. Dr. Paslay advised me to reconsider the opportunity at ExxonMobil and even though I did not really understand his logic, I trusted his judgment so much that I took his advice. The encouragement and educational insights I received from Professor Paslay clearly changed the course of my life for the better. I like the idea of being able to help kick off some things in Rice’s mechanical engineering department that would not have been possible because of lack of such flexible funds. And I especially like honoring a man who appeared at an important time in my life and guided me with such wisdom.” This spring, Barrera will announce the first Paul R. Paslay Endowed Excellence Fund award recipient(s).

—Michele Arnold is the senior writer in Rice’s Office of Development.