Prof. Jim Brenner
I'm a professor at Florida Tech in the departments of chemical and biomedical engineering, and a program chair in nanotechnology. In a way, I am the equivalent of Quentin Daniels, Galt's apprentice. Florida Tech is a private, non-tenure-granting university. I fund most of my own research and development (about $100 K over the years), but I'm not perfect. While most of my funded work has been for industry, I have gotten a couple of NSF grants and am deeply apologetic about it.
Rand had no problem with those who took advantage of grant programs as long as they did not publicly advocate for them.
I would very much like to hear some of the nanotechnology studies you are privy too.
I guess I am a Walter White, but I compare myself more to Kevin Costner's character in Field of Dream. I have built it, and now after 15 years, in the last two to three years, the growth is so fast they had to hire three people just like me to take over some of my teaching responsibilities.
What Hillsdale College is to many people, that's what Florida Tech is for science and engineering.
Our lives aren't that different.
I spend 5 hours per week at work being a handyman, spent all weekend washing chemical glassware in my home dishwasher,
and had my own band as a teenager.
Best wishes,
Prof. Jim Brenner
Florida Tech was founded in 1958 to help educate those who would go into the aerospace business with a 37 cent original endowment. We now have over 3000 students on campus and about the same at our off-campus, graduate student military sites.
Non-tenure-granting:
That means that we have no slackers, but if we do a job that is up to the standard of your typical Ph.D., our own standards are high enough that tenure is pretty irrelevant anyway.
We focus more on undergraduate teaching, with some graduate emphasis as well. I would put our undergrads against any university's. My daughter thought enough of the university that she is coming here next fall, and I put no pressure on her to do so.
Our graduate program is a work in progress.
We just barely made Tier 1 (the top 150 universities in the country) a few years ago.
We're the youngest university in Tier 1 and the fastest growing private university in Tier 1.
About the nanotech minor program, there is a lot to say. It has more lab credits than any in the world (7 credits). I think I will give you a few links to read.
Summaries of what we have been up to in the nanotech field are at
http://my.fit.edu/~jbrenner/nanotechexpt...
name = fltech password = brenner
in the following files:
nanotechtallahassee.ppt
nanotechcurriculumscriptshort.doc
BrennerNSFAward0939355reportv8.pdf
I have an e-mail blast that I send weekly with ChE/BME/MAE/nanotech jobs and news from jb012767@aol.com. I made enough money on AOL in the 1990's to be able to afford a lower paying job than I could have, but I live in paradise. We're not quite Galt's Gulch, but I teach the rocket scientists about the science in Stealth technology, so perhaps someday we will be Galt's Gulch. We're not high enough in elevation, but we do have our own flight school.
We're not ALL John Galt objectivists here at Florida Tech, but there are a lot of us, more than any place I've ever seen.
Best wishes,
Prof. Jim Brenner
Florida Tech Chemical and Biomedical Engg.
150 West University Blvd.
256 Olin Engineering Bldg.
Melbourne, FL 32901
jbrenner@fit.edu, jb012767@aol.com
321-749-3437