From student to Design Day judge: Ron Rich looks for ‘real teamwork’

Ron Rich earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona in mechanical engineering in 1982 and has offered valuable service to the College of Engineering as a Design Day judge, interdisciplinary capstone project sponsor, college advisory board member and guest lecturer. He has seen the program evolve into a college-wide collaboration over the last three decades.

Rich retired from Honeywell in 2018 as director of engineering for auxiliary power systems. He took home the Craig M. Berge Engineering Design Program Circle of Excellence Award in 2019 and continued helping engineering students as a mentor.

What compels you to come back to serve the program every year? 

I come back because I was coached and mentored when I was in school. I feel an obligation to offer that to young people. I like to provide my time and see the program be successful. 

Previously, capstone projects were separated by degree. What was your experience seeing the shift to a more collaborative College of Engineering program?

Originally, I was a judge in the aerospace and mechanical engineering department. I worked with some of the folks in the AME department and helped facilitate it to become a college-wide program.

What I like about it being interdisciplinary is that students from many departments work together to solve problems. And that is representative of real life. In industry, multidisciplinary people work together, each one bringing their skill or expertise. Not all of them know everything, and it becomes truly more like a team would be constructed in industry.

Also, I was a project manager in industry, and everything was done on a timeline. I wanted that experience in a team environment at the college level. So that was a push of mine.

When you are judging, what characteristics of a team or project typically stick out to you? 

One thing that is most important is that the whole team participated. Everybody should be involved. I've been associated with teams in the past, whether it was watching university teams or watching teams in the industry where a few people carry the load and people aren't held accountable. I'm looking for real teamwork.

I look for problem-solving. I try to understand what requirements they were given by their sponsor. What were the deliverables given? And did they achieve those objectives? And how did they do that? Not every team is successful. But I don't think success is necessarily measured by whether the experiment works the way you expected. There's always an aspect of learning that comes with that.

In the last few years, the projects have become better and better.

How did your student experience in the capstone program prepare you for your career? 

The project that two teammates and I were responsible for was a racing wheelchair for three quadriplegic U of A students. We designed the chair for people who weighed no more than about 130 pounds.

We presented that project on a Saturday. Around noon, during the break, an individual from the class climbed into the chair, screwed around and we had a failure.

Our professor said, ‘I know what happened, but you need to fix it.’ And at the end of the day Monday, it was delivered. There are two lessons I took away from that: Life's just not fair sometimes, and the customer doesn't care about any of the noise that occurred on Saturday.

Have you noticed positive changes to the program or the students themselves as time has progressed?

I've been judging every year for the last 25 years. I like the blend of talent coming out of the college. I like to see that diversity of thought and experience.

I like the interdisciplinary experiences they have as part of their regular curriculum.

Would you recommend the experience of sponsoring or judging to other companies and alumni? 

It’s very meaningful. I see it as an opportunity to give back to the college and to be impactful and to see some of the new engineers coming out of the school. I have hired several students from the College of Engineering throughout my career.

My advice is to take your experience in industry and apply it to providing feedback to students. That's very helpful.