José Zayas-Castro, professor
and chair of the
Department of
Industrial and
Management Systems in
the College of Engineering, along
with four other professors,
received the engineering profession’s
highest honors for 2006. At
a February awards ceremony in
Washington, D.C., Zayas-Castro
and his colleagues from four other
universities received the 2006
Bernard M. Gordon Prize. Along
with the prestigious recognition
comes a $500,000
award.
The Bernard M.
Gordon Prize was
established in
2001 to recognize
engineering
and technology
educators who
strive to strengthen
the engineering
work-force
through programs
which cultivate student leadership,
communication skills, creativity
and teambuilding. Zayas-Castro
and his colleagues received the
award for the creation and successful
implementation of “The
Learning Factory.”
An undergraduate program, The
Learning Factory was originally
designed to provide real-world
training to multidisciplinary engineering
students in order to produce
engineers who could easily
turn theory into practice and manage
engineering projects independently.
Teams of students
work together
to define a problem,
build a prototype,
create a
business proposal
and finally
present these
ideas and solutions
to a company.
Zayas-Castro
describes the program
as, “a hands-on environment
for students to practice, do, experiment
and re-do.” Students
involved in The Learning Factory
have worked on projects such as
turning coal ash into a pavement
or designing a collapsible crutch.
The Learning Factory was initially
implemented in three universities,
Pennsylvania State
University (PSU), the University of
Puerto Rico-Mayaguez (UPRM) and
the University of Washington in
1997. Successful implementation of
the program into each school’s
curriculum took about three years
according to Zayas-Castro.
The past eight years have
shown program expansion into
other departments in the original
NATIONAL DISTINCTION
J
BY JENNY BUNCH
The Bernard M. Gordon Prize is among the engineering profession’s
highest honors. USF Professor Jose-Zayas Castro received the prize
in February for the creation of “The Learning Factory.”
USF MAGAZINE SPRING/SUMMER 2006
19
institutions as well as other universities
in the United States and
Latin America.
Zayas-Castro became involved
with the initiative in 1993 when
the principal investigators from
PSU contacted the department at
UPRM where he was working and
he became the principal investigator
for the program at that institution.
A grant from the National
Science Foundation/Advanced
Research Projects Agency originally
funded the initiative.
Zayas-Castro says he renovated
his teaching style by better blending
theory, practice and lab experience
in the curriculum.
“I became more emphatic in
that students learn better by
doing,” says Zayas-Castro.
While the program is not fully
implemented at USF, Zayas-Castro
has redesigned the Capstone project
to include elements of The
Learning Factory.
“It provides students an environment
to go from conception to
design to manufacturing to business
justification. It is as close as it gets to
having a factory environment in the
university,” he concludes.
Zayas-Castro received his bachelor
of science degree in industrial
engineering from UPRM. He
earned a master of science degree
in industrial and management
engineering, as well as a master of
business administration degree and
a doctorate in management from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Zayas-Castro has also been
awarded the Fellow Award from
the Institute of Industrial Engineers
(IIE) and he was named
Distinguished Industrial Engineer
of the Year (1985-86) by IIE.
The other recipients of the
award in 2006 include Jens E.
Jorgensen, John S. Lamancusa,
Lueny Morell and Allen L. Soyster.
The award money will be funneled
back to the original three
universities for continued promotion
and growth of the program.
