The Professor Who Changed My Life

I have not yet submitted my 300-word "report" to Lehigh yet (how do you pick just one professor?), but I really enjoyed the ones already listed on the Lehigh "The Professor Who Changed My Life" web page.



We asked our alumni to tell us about the professors they had at Lehigh who really made a difference in their lives. The response was great!

In the coming months, we’ll continue to post more of your stories, so be sure to check back.

If you haven’t shared your story yet, there’s still time: Please take a few minutes to write an essay (maximum: 300 words) about the professor who had the greatest influence on your life and e-mail your essay to: letters(@)lehigh.edu. Please attach your essay as a standard Word document or include it in the body of your e-mail.




This one is my favorite alumni story thus far:

George Kane, professor of industrial engineering
By Donna Pitonak Bigley '78

That is an easy answer for me: Professor George Kane.

I met him when I was transferring into the Industrial Engineering Department and he was the chairman. He later became my advisor so I had reason to interface with him frequently (in those days, you had to physically see your advisor when you scheduled your next semester as opposed to doing everything on-line).

When I transferred into his department, he told me to always make sure I was running to something instead of from something, which in retrospect was truly sage advice! I also was privileged to be a student in several classes he taught. No matter what the topic, he always made it interesting and I looked forward to his classes. He recognized the importance of his engineers being able to confidently speak in front of groups and many of his classes required oral presentations, which was truly invaluable. He critiqued every oral presentation complete with a written sheet of suggestions on how to improve.

He always had time to talk to you when you were scheduling courses for next semester. He treated his students like they were a part of his family and he always had a smile and a cigar close by when you entered his office. At the time I graduated, there weren't a lot of women engineers and when he asked me about upcoming job interviews he advised, "Make them visualize you as an engineer ... don't wear eye shadow!"

He also taught me a very meaningful lesson that I have never forgotten during my career: that people are naturally going to resist change. An engineer is an agent of change—streamlining processes, introducing tools, etc. So it is up to the engineer to find a way to make changes "palatable" in order to be successful.

I had the pleasure of seeing him at a Lehigh-Lafayette game several years after graduation and he walked over and shook my hand and asked how my job was going at GE. I was amazed he remembered my name and even more impressed he knew where I was working! It was just one more example of how much he valued his students and I was lucky to have been one of them.