Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Class of 2019: Doug Beal
Doug Beal hadn’t been at Purdue University long when he walked into AAE251.
During the course introduction, Beal remembers the professor’s impassioned primer differentiating “professionals” and “hourly employees,” stressing to the sophomores in Introduction to Aerospace Design that they were not venturing into a career with a clock-in, clock-out mentality. They’d be expected to work to a standard of excellence over long hours. There was no showing up and going through the motions.
For Beal, a teenager who’d worked only hourly jobs to that point, it was something he’d never fully considered.
“His point was, ‘Aerospace engineering is a stay-there-until-you-get-the-job-done profession.’ Quality and results would be important,” Beal says. “That was a capstone moment for me and determined the way I approached all work throughout my career.”
It was one of several transformative moments Beal had during his four years at Purdue. Though he admittedly wishes he would have applied himself more in the classroom, each day he was subjected to professors’ insistence on high standards. Beal also is quick to point out that students today cannot afford to take it easy in their academic lives, and that he redeemed himself later as a straight-A graduate student. He says that AAE251 lecture set an enduring tone: One of professional habits and ethics that he’s exemplified during an accomplished military career.
He’s a seasoned military leader, executive and professional airline pilot with nearly 32 years of service and 12,000 mishap-free military and civilian flight hours. After 13 years of active service, he’s spent the last 20 as a reserve officer, including as the Vice Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. Fifth Fleet since October 2017.
His current role entails serving on an executive team, leading a 550-person staff that directs all U.S. military maritime operations in the Middle East. Beal augments the team during times of heightened operational tempo and serves as acting Fleet Commander or Deputy Commander during the absence of the active component flag officers. When that’s the case, Rear Admiral Beal leads a fleet that includes Sailors and Marines ashore or on ships deployed over 2.2 million square miles of water space. The U.S. Fifth Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command headquarters ensure the free flow of commerce in three maritime choke points and oversee Navy combat action in two named operations. Beal also heads 10 reserve units, ensuring the reserve component is efficient, fully manned, and sufficiently ready to support the fleet.
Each responsibility is one Beal cherishes, as an opportunity to be part of a team, lead and influence, as well as protect the country he adores.
And those are only a few reasons Beal was chosen as an Outstanding Aerospace Engineer, the award that honors School of Aeronautics and Astronautics alumni who have distinguished themselves by demonstrating excellence in industry, academia, government service or other endeavors that reflect the value of a Purdue aerospace engineering degree.
“It’s humbling and unexpected,” Beal says of the award, which will be presented at a banquet April 2. “Thirty-two years ago, I left an aeronautical engineering job at Boeing in Seattle to chase the opportunity to fly gray, fire-spitting Navy airplanes off of big ships at sea. Over time, that has morphed into a lifelong career of doing what I absolutely love — supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States of America. I have taken an oath affirming that duty nine times. The degree from Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics was a great launch pad for my Navy career, and I’m grateful for the opportunities that the education facilitated.”
Not bad for an Indiana kid who first dreamed of becoming a pilot after a watershed moment in his backyard.
Beal will never forget when a Douglas DC-3, a fixed-wing propeller-driven plane, flew overhead one day when he was 8. He remembers the engine on fire, the prop spinning to a stop, and smoke trailing behind the plane.
“I don’t know why that’s appealing to an 8-year-old kid, but it certainly was. I said, ‘Well, that’s what I want to do,’” Beal says. “From that point, everything that had to do with airplanes interested me.”
Since then, Beal has nurtured a particular familiarity with them.
He has deployed on four different aircraft carriers, used his engineering skills as a Navy test pilot, played the “bad guy” as an aggressor pilot, and taught students how to fly as a primary flight instructor. He has accumulated 3,844 military flight hours, 55 combat sorties and 472 carrier-arrested landings, initially as an A-6E Intruder pilot in Attack Squadron 52 and later as a F/A-18 Hornet pilot. When not serving in Bahrain for the U.S. Navy, he works as a pilot for American Airlines where he has logged more than 9,500 flight hours in a McDonnell Douglas Super 80, Boeing 757/767, Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 series and is currently a qualified 737 captain.
But Beal’s career hasn’t all been about flying, even if that’s where the initial interest stemmed.
As Beal rose, he earned more opportunities to mentor and teach, whether commanding strike-fighter squadrons, leading the Navy’s largest reserve training wing, or serving as deputy commander for Navy Recruiting Command.
That’s meant a need to cultivate and grow leadership skills and learn how to translate that engineering mindset to problem-solving. He drew on his Purdue education for the latter — he calls it a “data-informed, logical, process-based approach” — and perhaps a surprising source to spur the former.
Between semesters at Purdue, Beal spent summers cutting grass on the White River canal for a public utility in Indianapolis. He tied a rope to the base of the handle of the lawnmower, dropped the mower down the bank and pulled it up again. Then repeated the process. He worked for two full-time hourly employees who mentored him. But it was a grueling job that required a “strong back and a weak mind,” he jokes, but it paid well — enough to fund an education at Purdue. The summer job also fundamentally changed his perspective. He was exposed daily to blighted neighborhoods, drug abuse and racial tension.
“As a kid from the suburbs, it was a pretty big eye opener,” he says. “It was a contrast to Purdue where typically I went to school with kids who were from more affluent backgrounds than the kids I saw in the inner city in Indianapolis. It just made me realize that all these folks are human beings and deserve to be treated with respect. That’s been the foundation of my leadership philosophy since the very beginning.”
Beal isn’t quite sure when the “end” will be.
He joked he’ll need to be dragged out of the Navy, fingernails scraping the walls.
It’s just too hard to envision stepping away completely from a job that is so much more than that, so far beyond what he would have envisioned when he first heard in that AAE251 class about the commitment required to be successful in a career. The Navy has been a much deeper, rewarding experience — despite those consistently long, arduous, and sometimes tense, hours — than he ever could have imagined.
“It’s not a job I want to give up,” Beal says. “I really enjoy it. I’ve loved every minute of it. The reason I continued on in reserves is because I love serving my country. I loved flying. I love the service, and I love the people. Every day I work with the Navy, I’m inspired by the young folks who come in and do extraordinary work. It probably sounds a little corny, but that’s really what drives me."
More on 2019 Class of OAEs:
March 25: Julie Arndt
March 26: Chris Azzano
March 27: Doug Beal
March 28: Mike Dreessen
March 29: Tony Gingiss
April 1: Scott Meyer
April 2: Lindsay Millard
April 3: David Thompson