MSOE President Eric Baumgartner Speaks of ‘Industry as our customers—and our students serve those customers'

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Photo by Tom Jenz

Dr. Eric Baumgartner - MSOE

MSOE President Dr. Eric Baumgartner

One of the city’s most impressive institutions, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, is home to more than 3,000 students and carries outsized credentials. MSOE is ranked among the top engineering schools in the country.

For a place with national bragging rights, it feels almost shy. Many Milwaukee residents walk or drive past without realizing that behind those brick walls, robots are being programmed, rockets are being designed, at least on paper, and future industry leaders are working to bring projects to life.

Step inside and the mood feels focused but friendly. There’s a courtyard that softens the city edges and an art museum honoring the evolution of work. The classrooms and labs hum with activity. Students test prototypes, run simulations, and tackle real-world challenges with the kind of intensity usually reserved for playoff season.

When I walked into the building, classes were letting out. I was fascinated to see the diversity of students hurrying to their next classes. Those students are not just bright, they are seriously bright. Coming from 40 countries, they bring global perspectives and impressive brainpower. It’s the kind of place where “engineering toys” mean advanced technology, and casual conversation might include phrases like “load-bearing capacity” or “algorithm optimization.”

MSOE offers 22 bachelor’s degrees across nine academic departments, 10 in engineering along with nine master’s programs. But more than the numbers, it’s the culture that stands out: practical, collaborative, and tacitly ambitious. In Downtown Milwaukee, big learning is being built every day.

It is in this setting that I met MSOE’s president, 59-year-old Dr. Eric Baumgartner. We settled into the conference room adjacent to his office.

Tell me about growing up, family, neighborhoods, schools, and your educational path. I understand, as a boy, you were interested in science fiction.

I loved science fiction, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Dune, Arthur C. Clarke, I ate that stuff up. I grew up in a little farming community in upstate New York, Fort Plain. My parents both grew up in New York City, started their family there. My dad was an insurance guy. Eventually, we moved up to Fort Plain where he bought an insurance agency. There were 70 kids in my high school graduating class.

Did you have an interest in engineering early on?

I was interested in space science. I was a fan of Carl Sagan and his “Cosmos” series. I was an avid follower of NASA, and I wanted to work there. I even wanted to be an astronaut. I decided to become an aerospace engineer. I went to Notre Dame and got my undergrad degree in aerospace engineering, then got my master’s degree at the University of Cincinnati. My thesis focused on the Space Shuttle engine. In 1990, I went back to Notre Dame for my PhD, and I worked with a professor who was developing a mobile robot for indoor use. 

In today’s world, home robots are not unusual. I’m thinking of vacuum cleaners.

Yes. That experience was my first introduction to working on robotics. It was fun. I built my own robot including the hardware and software and earned my PhD in 1993.

What was your first job after university life?

I was an assistant professor at Michigan Technological University in the Upper Peninsula, a good engineering school. But yet I still wanted to work in the field of engineering. I got a summer faculty fellowship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. After my third year at Michigan Tech, I landed a full-time job at NASA in California. That was 1996. I worked in robotics, and our goal was to explore other planets. My focus was on the planet Mars. In 2003, we launched the Mars Rovers. I was responsible for the robot arms. When the Rovers landed on Mars, I helped build the sequences and became a Rover Driver, and in 2004, I drove the Opportunity rover around the Martian surface. 

What a wonderful accomplishment. How did you end up at Milwaukee School of Engineering?

After 10 years, I wanted to get back into academia, and I became dean of engineering at Ohio Northern University. In 2017, when MSOE put out an ad for a vice president of academics, I applied and got the job. I held that job until I was appointed president.

What are your job responsibilities in this role?

MSOE has a long history, been around for nearly 125 years. My job is to be a good steward for the college. I meet with alumni, corporate and community partners and work with our board of regents. I try to raise funds and make sure we remain financially secure. 

MSOE was founded in 1903 by a German immigrant who saw the need for engineers to support industry like Johnson Controls, Allen Bradley and A.O. Smith. Over these many years, MSOE has served area industry. We think of industry as our customers, and our students serve those customers. Currently, we are still technically focused on engineering.

I was interested to learn that MSOE offers bachelors’ bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing. How does nursing align with the discipline of engineering?

Healthcare disciplines are getting more technical, and nursing fits beautifully. Nursing includes machine learning, charting and testing data. We offer two master’s degree programs, one, mental health and two, executive leadership for nursing professionals. Nursing is in high demand for professionals.

MSOE offers advanced degrees for adults already out in the workforce. How does that program work?

We offer both credit-bearing and noncredit-bearing programs. For example, we built an undergraduate program in computer science eight years ago that focuses on artificial intelligence, AI. Then, we created a Master’s of Science in Machine Learning. Before Covid, we were an in-person educational environment. Since then, we have gone virtual. The Machine Learning Master’s program was set up as virtual, generally 5 to 7 p.m. in the evenings, lectures, labs and interactions with faculty. Same with our business schools, and classes are offered for a semester or half semesters. Nearly all of our master’s programs are offered in an online format. We also have noncredit programs for professionals in various disciplines. 

Artificial intelligence, including robotics, is now and will be in the future a huge driver of human behavior, science, business and learning. Where do you see AI influencing engineering?

We’ve been fortunate to have a supporter named Dwight Diercks, a graduate of MSOE and now a senior vice president of NVIDIA. 

NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the United States and the world. Huge in the artificial intelligence economy. 

It is. Dwight was in on the ground floor at NVIDIA. Around 2015, he could see the future of AI being where we are today. Dwight gave us a chunk of his stock to create a computational science hall. That building opened in 2019, the Dwight and Diane  Diercks Computational Science Hall. Inside that building is the AI data center, which is accessible to our students. Dwight named the data center “Rosie.” MSOE was in on the ground floor of AI education at the undergraduate level. We keep working on how to educate better by using AI in all our disciplines. We are one of the leading institutions in the application of AI.  

Let’s talk demographics: Your student body is approximately 71% male and 29% female. Do you see more women getting into engineering? And what about foreign students and people of color?

Over the decades, there has been a lot of work to move the needle as to gender in engineering. In fact, my youngest daughter is an engineer. It’s not easy for women in the world of engineering. That ratio of men to women has remained stagnant for a long time.

Many educators are reaching out to girls in the 3rd grade to 8th grade window including MSOE. We are doing this work through our We Energies STEM Center. That is a critical time for encouraging girls to take an interest in engineering. There is the flip side story for the nursing field, which is female-dominated. 

What about people of color?

We’ve seen a shift in our demographics, and we have more students of color coming here than in the past. That’s great. We want to be inclusive. We emphasize that an education in engineering and nursing provide a great return on investment, good-paying jobs in the future.

It’s like a practical education.

Right. Everyone at MSOE has the opportunity to achieve economic status.

Coming here, I was walking down North Broadway, and the students were exiting their buildings. I saw a remarkable variety of ethnic groups. 

When I arrived here eight and a half years ago, we did not look that way. Walking around campus now, it looks and feels different.

What do you envision as the future of engineering? Will there be new fields?

We are educating students for future jobs we don’t even know exist. We have to be responsive for the needs of industry. There will be more quantum and AI disciplines. But we are still going to need civil and electrical engineers to build highways and buildings and automobiles. There will always be foundational engineering principles.