Dean A.A. Potter Faculty Excellence Award for Undergraduate Teaching
Andrey Abraham Potter was born in Vilnius in Russia, now capital of Lithuania in 1882. He emigrated in 1887 at the age of fifteen to the United States. At the age of 17 he entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he obtained his BSc in 1903. After graduation in 1903 Potter started as turbine engineer at General Electric in Schenectady, New York. In 1905 he accepted an appointment at the Kansas State University College of Agriculture as assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering. In 1913 he was also appointed Dean of Engineering, and became director of the university's Engineering Experiment Station.
In 1920 Potter moved to the Purdue University, where he served as Dean of Engineering until his retirement in 1953. Potter served as the thesis advisor of Maurice Zucrow, the first recipient of a PhD degree in engineering from Purdue. In the year 1945-46 he also served as president of Purdue University. Dean Potter built Purdue Engineering into the largest and one of the most respected engineering colleges in the country by doubling the enrollment, overseeing the construction of three new buildings and founding three new engineering schools.
In a 1977 newspaper profile on the occasion of Purdue naming a building in his honor, Potter is quoted saying: "Customers, pupils and associates are attracted to those who by word and deed demonstrate a genuine interest in others. This human interest involves kindness, courtesy, candor, fairness, respect, understanding, frankness, optimism, and much of giving self."
