Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Defense deal could bring benefits to UTA
By Matt Ward
The Shorthorn

ARLINGTON (U-WIRE) — The University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Engineering could soon realize some big benefits from last week’s announcement that Lockheed Martin Corp. was chosen to build the new Joint Strike Fighter for the United States and its military allies, university officials said Monday.

The roughly $200 billion windfall, the biggest in defense history, was awarded to the Bethesda, Md.-based defense contractor after five years of competition with Boeing Corp. The companies each designed and manufactured prototypes of the next generation of warplane, which will include stealth technology, high-tech cockpit computers and vertical landing and takeoff capabilities.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth is expected to hire about 9,000 employees to complement its 11,000 already in place to build the jet fighter. Many of these hires will need to be engineers of all backgrounds, university faculty said.

For the College of Engineering, the benefits could include increased graduate enrollment, more Lockheed-funded research and closer ties between the university and the defense company.

“I am optimistic Lockheed will invest in UTA in various ways to help us produce engineering graduates,” Engineering Dean Bill Carroll said. “I think it is in their best interest to work closely with us, and they agree with that.”

Lockheed Martin could help officials here recruit more faculty as well and create new programs, Carroll said.

A few initiatives between the company and the College of Engineering are in the works, the dean said, but details could not yet be released.

One Lockheed employee said the company “leans” on UTA and often works with the engineering college. But company officials, citing a deluge of media requests, could not provide comments by press time. Nevertheless, the mood among engineering faculty here is enthusiastic about the future, some said.

“We are all aware of what’s going on and know people out there,” said Roger Goolsby, a professor in the material sciences and engineering department. “We feel like we will be impacted, too.”

Goolsby has taught at UTA since 1980 and can remember having Lockheed Martin employees in his classes all the time. But at the end of the Cold War, much of the defense industry was forced to change, he said. In the 1990s, Goolsby said he taught fewer engineers from Lockheed. But he said that could soon change.

“I think it has been a tough decade for them. They had a program canceled in the late ‘80s and lost a lot of engineering talent at the end of the Cold War,” he said. “They probably have a great need for young talent.”

Some of that talent will come from the university’s mechanical and aerospace engineering department. Don Wilson, the department’s chair, said engineering officials are talking with Lockheed employees about providing computer-aided design instruction for new engineers. Wilson said many new engineers could also want to use the university as a means to further their education.

“We’ve heard rumors that they will be hiring between 50 and 60 engineers a week,” Wilson said. “There’ll be a lot of engineers in this area, and we hope some will want to continue their education here.”

The engineering program here is competitive, and faculty members hope Lockheed officials keep that in mind. While some nearby universities have small programs, none are suitable to provide the quantity and quality of engineers as UTA, Dr. Carroll said.

“We’re the only comprehensive engineering school in a 200-mile radius,” he said.

Electrical engineering Chairman Raymond Shoults said he agreed. He said UTA engineering is in the right place at the right time.

“They’ve said to us that they want to establish stronger linkages,” he said. “There is a strong program here, and it’s in their own backyard, so to speak.”