MAE staff retirements
After over 60 years of service to Ohio State University, MAE Lab Supervisor Joe West, and MAE Administrative Associate Ralph Orr have announced their retirement.
Laboratory Supervisor, Joe West’s retirement comes after 32 years of service to Ohio State, 30 of them being with the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
His impact includes contributions to MAE curriculum content, especially MAE laboratories and hands-on experiential learning classes, capstone projects. He designed and developed new laboratory experiments and made substantial modifications to existing experiments in our core and elective undergraduate classes such as ME482, ME512, ME570, ME571, ME610H, ME2900, ME3870, and ME4870.
In his work, West also repaired MAE legacy equipment, generated preliminary results for faculty members to be able to submit proposals for external funding, and provided experimental support for undergraduate and graduate students.
Joe is known as a chief problem-solver to many undergraduate and graduate students, assisting them constantly in their projects or thesis-related research. He was able to keep MAE equipment in working condition regardless of its state or age, and he will be remembered for his uncanny resourcefulness and ingenuity.
As a part of the MAE fiscal team, Ralph worked to provide the department with needed resources and materials. He has been a long-serving and key member of the MAE administrative staff, and will be missed, especially so for the genuinely gentle and pleasant manner in which he handled administrative tasks
