Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering - History

History

At the turn of the 20th century, Penn State had developed a national reputation for its engineering curriculum, but industrial engineering was only beginning to emerge as an academic discipline. Noted efficiency expert Frederick Taylor recommended that university president James A. Beaver hire Hugo Diemer, a professor from the University of Kansas, in the hope that Diemer would create an industrial engineering curriculum at Penn State. A two-year option was ready by 1908, and a four-year bachelor's degree program emerged the following year, the first of its kind in the world. At the time, courses consisted of modern industrial engineering fundamentals such as time and motion study, plant layout optimization, and engineering economics, in addition to courses on advertising and sales. The new department also took over the instruction of manual shop skills, including carpentry and metalworking.

At the time, the department did not have its own building, and for many years shared building space with other departments in the university's College of Engineering. In the 1980s, Penn State board members began to consider expanding the campus toward the west, and by 1987, initial plans to construct a new engineering building were in place. The Penn State Board of Trustees funded the project in 1995 amid concerns of damaging the aesthetics of the previously undeveloped western edge of campus. Some trustees disapproved of the building design, but the board ultimately released $5 million from its fund dedicated to expanding west campus. In 1998, the project received additional funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The building opened in 2000 and was named after William E. Leonhard, a 1936 Penn State alumnus who with his wife has donated in excess of $1 million toward engineering at Penn State. In 1999, the department itself was named after Harold and Inge Marcus, a couple living in Washington who donated $5 million to the department.

In 2005, the department restructured the undergraduate industrial engineering curriculum for the first time in 21 years. Shifting its focus somewhat from its traditional manufacturing emphasis, the new curriculum introduced several courses related to the service industry. An industry advisory board in conjunction with faculty helped guide the changes, mentioning healthcare, supply chains, and e-commerce as service industry opportunities for industrial engineers. Under the new curriculum, students take a number of refactored courses, and are offered a choice between three separate subject tracks, allowing them to focus their major on manufacturing, the service industry, or information technology.