Wallace William Bowley (1932 – 1991) grew up in Burlington, VT. and attended Burlington High School from 1947 to 1951. Initially, Dr. Bowley\u2019s family could not afford to send him to college. However, he was ultimately able to attend due to an academic scholarship he received from Norwich University, located in Northfield, VT.\u00a0 He graduated in 1955 with a bachelor\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering. After spending a summer at home earning some money driving trucks and tinkering with his Indian motorcycle, he entered graduate school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the fall of 1955.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Due to his military service commitment from Norwich University, Dr. Bowley was required to enter the Army after graduating from RPI in May of 1957 with a master\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering. As a 1st<\/sup> Lieutenant in the Army\u2019s tank division in Fort Knox, KY, he was recruited by Pratt & Whitney to work on a top secret project \u2013 the SR-71 \u201cBlackbird\u201d jet engine. These engines power the SR-71 to speed records reaching three-times the speed of sound (Mach 3) and this aircraft still holds the Official Airspeed Record for the fastest manned air-breathing jet craft. One can be seen i After a year with Pratt & Whitney in Florida, he decided to go back into teaching full-time; he accepted an offer at his alma mater<\/em>, Norwich University.\u00a0 Dr. Bowley continued to perform consulting work for Pratt & Whitney\/United Technologies Research Center for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n While teaching at Norwich University, Dr. Bowley was invited to return to UConn to pursue a Ph.D. \u00a0He accepted and moved his small family to Storrs in the fall of 1962. \u00a0When he received his doctorate in June of 1965, he was one of the first individuals to graduate from UConn with a Ph.D. in engineering and was offered a faculty position in the mechanical engineering department at UConn \u2013 a rarity in academia, which generally does not hire their own graduates.\u00a0<\/p>\n His career thrived. In 1966 he was awarded the Student Senate\u2019s Distinguished Faculty Award.\u00a0 Dr. Bowley was named Assistant Dean of the School of Engineering from 1968-1986, and he died unexpectedly while still serving at UConn as a professor, in October of 1991.\u00a0 During his tenure at UConn, he graduated the most Ph.D. students of any faculty engineering member: his inspirational way of teaching attracted many students who sought him as their mentor.<\/p>\n Inspiration<\/strong><\/p>\n In early 1973, Dr. Wallace Bowley filed for what would be his first of ten issued patents in the field of engineering. \u201cInventing is the fun part of engineering,\u201d said Dr. Bowley in a 1976 interview with the Hartford Courant<\/em>. \u201cThe key to the art is not to be tied to convention, and not be afraid to be thought of as \u2018different.\u2019 It is important to be a bit of a radical.\u201d<\/p>\n And that he was. As one of Dr. Bowley\u2019s former doctoral students, Dr. John Cowles, said, \u201cWally was not bound by traditional thoughts and ideas. \u00a0He was a great influence, because where everyone else saw the world as it existed, Wally saw a world that could be made better. He was always reaching for the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n Teaching<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Bowley expressed this not only through his lifestyle, but also through his teaching methods. \u201cThe students all loved Wally,\u201d said colleague Dr. Bob Jeffers. \u201cHe engaged and excited them through different approaches to engineering. Most students found him to be a great teacher, and the experiences he offered the students were nearly invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Bowley is responsible for structuring two senior design classes. One, ME 264, is a unique, often grueling class that proved to be a sort of \u201cright of passage\u201d for mechanical engineering students and focused on analysis methods taught in a novel way by Dr. Bowley.\u00a0 Years later, many graduates would return to Storrs to thank their former professor for bringing everything together for them and giving them the tools to solve real-world engineering problems.\u00a0 Dr. Bowley developed a second class, ME 265, the second in a two-part sequence.<\/p>\n \u201cThe spring class was where Wally really shared his creativity with his students,\u201d said former colleague Dr. Lee Langston. \u201cWally was always trying to get them to do new and exciting things. Nobody could continue the class when he was no longer here,\u201d said Langston. \u201cWe just weren\u2019t as creative.\u201d<\/p>\n The format for ME 265 involved one problem, which everyone would focus on solving during the next 14 weeks.\u00a0 Each group would work in secret toward development of a prototype machine, which would best solve the problem given.\u00a0 The assignment culminated in a group presentation to the class on a Friday evening prior to \u201cCompetition Day,\u201d where each group design was finally revealed. The next day, each group would finally put their prototype design to the ultimate test: how well does the design perform at the task versus the other groups?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cStudents worked on the same project in teams of three-to-four people. The student groups tested their designs in real life. It taught them two things: one, these things that they learned in textbooks could really be used in the real world, and two, the most important thing is that they learned to work as a team,\u201d said Dr. Peter McFadden, former Dean of Engineering, in a 1991 interview with the Courant<\/em>. The projects he would engage them in went beyond the traditional classroom expectations and included a hand-powered bicycle, an amphibious vehicle, and even a robotic climbing mechanism.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was by far the most interesting, valuable and labor intensive course I\u2019ve ever taken,\u201d said daughter Dr. Susan M. Bowley, who received her B.S. in mechanical engineering at UConn before earning her graduate degrees at Stanford University and the University of Virginia. \u201cAnd don\u2019t think he let me off easily because he was my Dad,\u201d she joked, \u201cHe was one of the toughest graders I\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/bowley2a.jpg\" "\\"bowley2a\\"")
<\/a>n the National Air and Space Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n