Dennis Weatherby - Career

Career

With his team, Weatherby developed a solution that employed a category of dyes that could be used in products containing bleach and, at the same time, would give the soap a lemon-yellow color that would not stain dishes. Before his invention, pigments were used in such solutions that often stained dishes and dishwasher interiors. With fellow inventor Brian J. Roselle, he received U.S. patent No. 4,714,562, issued on Dec. 22, 1987, for his breakthrough “Automatic dishwasher detergent composition.” The solution serves as the basic formula behind all of today’s “lemon-scented” cleaning products containing bleach.

Following his stint with P&G, Weatherby briefly worked for the Whittaker Corporation, a division of Morton International. Then, in 1989, he began working for his alma mater, CSU, as an academic advisor and recruiter in the water resources center. According to the school, which has historically catered to black students, under Weatherby’s leadership the program experienced a more than 400 percent growth in student enrollment with a better than 80 percent retention rate. In 1994 he became an assistant professor of water quality at CSU in its International Center for Water Resources Management. He also served as the primary recruiter, advisor and counselor for students in the environmental program at CSU.

In 1996, Weatherby moved on to the institution where he had completed his graduate studies, Auburn University, to become director of the school’s new minority engineering program. There he served as a role model and advisor for black and other young minority men and women and also chaired external programs such as an undergraduate science symposium for showcasing students’ research from six area colleges and universities. An MEP (Minority Engineering Program) report stated that minority first-year freshman pre-engineering students involved in the program in 1998-99 had a mean grad-point average over their first three academic quarters of 2.70. Nearly 79 percent of the participants had GPAs equal to or better than the 2.20 required to begin taking engineering courses. By comparison, white first year freshman pre-engineering students had a mean GPA after three quarters of 2.56 and just below 70 percent had the required 2.20 GPA. Dr. Weatherby left Auburn to become an associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Notre Dame in 2004. In 2006, he became the Associate Provost for Student Success at Northern Kentucky University, which he served until his death in September 2007.