75 Years of WE at Ohio State - Jeff Noruk

Jeff Noruk Ohio State University Welding Engineering 1978

Jeffrey Noruk, B.S. WE 1978

"My name is Jeffrey Noruk and I am a 1978 graduate of The Ohio State University (OSU) Welding Engineering program. My path to finding this program and becoming a welding engineer was somewhat unique. Back in the early 1970’s I think most of us in the program found welding engineering after considering a myriad of other options. In this short writeup I’d like to share with you my memories of attending college and the positive effect this program, and all of the people associated with it, have had on my career and life.

From a Milwaukee company called Harnischfeger Corporation (now Komatsu) I received a scholarship for which I was eligible to apply because my father was an employee. Harnischfeger at that time had two welding engineers from OSU who graduated from the program in the late 1940’s. Both had moved into management so they wanted a new welding engineer to follow in their footsteps. The scholarship paid my full tuition ($450/quarter) and it included an internship every summer which paid me enough to cover the room and board.

I started in the welding engineering (WE) program when the “old guard” of professors was reaching the twilight of their careers. At that time, there were no laptop computers or robots. I first met Roy McCauley (head of the WE department) when I visited with my parents to help decide if I should go into this field. I’ll never forget what Professor McCauley said about the program’s graduates: we were generalists (we have core WE classes but take many classes outside our department) and many of us would end up in a different field than welding engineering including roles in management. The other professors in the program at that time were Roy McMaster, Bill Green, Clarence Jackson, Ed Funk and the “new kid” was David Howden. I have many fond memories of these prestigious professors but the one that always sticks in my mind is the attention to detail Professor McMaster would take when reviewing our lab reports. He would read every sentence and mark in red a (+) for a good point and a (-) for missing a key item. To think that a world renowned expert in nondestructive testing (NDT) would take time to critique all of our papers to this level of detail is quite impressive and has stuck with me all these years. As they say, “the devil is in the details”.

After graduation I joined Harnischfeger as a welding engineer and enjoyed my 5 years there tremendously. I then worked for Newport News Shipbuilding, AO Smith Corporation, FANUC Robotics, Tower Automotive and Servo Robot for the last 21 years. Along the way I have had the opportunity to meet hundreds of fellow OSU welding engineers in factories, at exhibitions and working together on AWS committees. For the first 25 years after graduation, I was not that active with the OSU WE Alumni Society and in fact only came back and visited campus perhaps a dozen times. Starting in the early 2000’s I re-engaged with the program and joined the WE Alumni Society, was President for a couple years and have been active on the board ever since. It is a great group of people, and we are especially pumped up to be involved with the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the program's first degree being awarded."