“Purdue has had an outstanding aerospace engineering program for over five decades, and it remains in the first rank today. Key to this has been the School’s excellent faculty, and many of these individuals, past and present, remain among my most valued professional colleagues and personal friends. Several helped provide me an education in the fullest sense. For this, I will always be grateful.”
John H. McMasters is currently a program manager for the Ed Wells Initiative, a joint program between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace charged with enhancing the technical excellence of the Boeing technical workforce.
His professional and vocational interests run together over a broad range of topics including low-speed/high lift aerodynamics, airplane design, bioaerodynamics, paleontology and engineering education. He has authored more than 90 publications and technical papers and has lectured in all these topic areas. He holds a configuration patent for an airplane designed under a NASA contract circa 1993-5. He was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal in 1965 for work on an air-to-air guided missile he conceived and helped develop. An Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, McMasters served for two years (1992-94) as an AIAA Distinguished Lecturer and will again in 2002-03.
Prior to joining Boeing in 1976, McMasters held faculty positions at Arizona State University and Purdue. His strong interest in engineering education has continued, and in addition to teaching airplane design courses at Boeing and the University of Washington, he has been a member of The Boeing Company University Relations Process Council. In this connection he has been instrumental in establishing and conducting the Boeing-Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship, Boeing Fellow on Campus and Boeing Outstanding Educator Programs.