For years to come, undergraduate students in the School of Nuclear Engineering will benefit from a generous gift provided by alumnus Don MacFarlane (MSNE ’57, PhD NE ’66) during Purdue Day of Giving 2020.

He made a new estate gift of $90,000 to support the Donald R. MacFarlane Scholarship Endowment in Nuclear Engineering. It will be combined with his original 2013 estate gift of $100,000 to the same fund.

“I’ve had a pretty good connection with Purdue. They were good to me. I have been very fortunate in my life, so I said, ‘why not?’”

MacFarlane grew up in Chicago in a section of the city called Beverly. Money for college was tight, so he opted to attend the nearby, “relatively inexpensive” Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), earning his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1952.

After graduation, he went to work at a research lab for Sinclair Oil, but his stint there was short-lived.  In 1954, he was drafted by the U.S. Army during the Korean War, served two years, and in doing so, “qualified for a few bucks” through the GI Bill.

By this time, he was “a little bored” with chemical engineering and was beginning to take a keen interest in the field of nuclear engineering. “I was a young guy looking for an interesting field with a lot of adventure. At that time, the nuclear industry was just evolving and developing,” he said, “and there was a lot of talk about building nuclear power plants.”

“How could a guy go wrong in a career that is central in generating electric energy with nuclear power, which is so environmentally friendly? The sky was the limit in those days. Everyone was so extremely optimistic about what this was going to do for our power supply, and I bought into it, too. I was just enamored by the whole process.”

Chemical engineering had been a good starting point, he shared, “because you learn a lot of stuff relevant to nuclear engineering, like nuclear reactions. It was kind of a natural direction to go.”

Putting the GI Bill to use, he entered the master’s program at Purdue and earned his degree in nuclear engineering in 1957.

Fresh degree in hand, his next stop was at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. This was the Cold War era, a political standoff between Russia and the United States. Americans were alarmed when Russia in 1957 successfully launched into space its satellite, Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit Earth. This sent the United States government into a Space Race tailspin, worried that the Russians were encroaching on new, technology-based warfare, and feared that the education in the Soviet Union was superior to that of the United States.

“The government panicked,” MacFarlane said, “and as a result started sponsored scholarships for PhD students.”

The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was passed in 1958, providing federal funding to bolster education in the areas of science, mathematics and modern foreign languages. The NDEA authorized the appropriation of more than $1B over the next seven years to achieve its goals, signaling the expansion of the role of the federal government in the education of its citizens.

“I was qualified to do it because I could finish my PhD in one year if I went back to the same school where I got my last degree and applied all of the previous classes I took. And, I could keep doing research at Argonne earning my full salary. It was a tax-free scholarship essentially. I got a slight raise by going back to school!”

He earned his doctorate in nuclear engineering from Purdue in 1966 and left Argonne in 1974. He then went to work at ComEd utility in Chicago for one year before leaving to start a small engineering consulting business with some of his Argonne colleagues.

Then, in the mid-1980s, he got a phone call from Purdue. His doctorate advisor and professor had retired, “and they wanted me to show up in two weeks to start teaching for the fall term. I scratched my head and said, ‘You guys have got to be kidding me.’”

His initial response was to decline, saying he was too busy as a consultant. But it didn’t take him long to change his mind, and he ended up teaching three semesters as a nuclear engineering visiting professor.

“You learn new things when you have to teach them. It was a great experience. These kids are sharp, and they kept me on my toes. I formed a lot of good relationships with students,” he said.

During this time, his daughter Ginger was a Purdue student, earning her degree in foods and nutrition. “I was actually at her graduation as a member of the faculty,” he laughed.

As he wrapped up his professorship at Purdue, he was at another crossroad in his career. His consulting firm had been sold to a “beltway bandit,” a private company located near Washington, D.C. that does a large percentage of its business as a federal government contractor. He was still employed by the firm but knew it was time to make a change.

“I always liked the mountains and the West, so I started talking to some friends out there. I had buddies at Los Alamos National Laboratory (near Santa Fe, NM) and got a job and worked there eight years,” MacFarlane said. He retired in 1996 and decided to stay in the area.

At 91 years young, MacFarlane sold his home in early 2020 and moved into a retirement community at the onset of COVID-19. An active and social man, the pandemic and its restrictions have been difficult for him socially. He is grateful that the fitness facilities at his new home have recently re-opened, albeit under strict safety guidelines. He says exercise keeps him physically fit and mentally sharp. He enjoys swimming, weight training, walking on the treadmill, balancing exercises, and punching bags, which, he says with a chuckle, helps him address his frustrations over social distancing.

His daughter Ginger works in hospital food management and lives in the Boston area. He and his son “share some commonalities.” Eric MacFarlane earned his master’s degree in structural engineering from IIT, works at Los Alamos, and lives 20 minutes away.

MacFarlane says he doesn’t know the future of nuclear engineering, but he remains vested in students exploring what the field has to offer without being derailed by financial obstacles.

“There are a lot of smart people. What there isn’t enough of is the money to educate them. I feel like the success of the country depends on people being well educated,” he said, explaining why he was compelled to establish the scholarship endowment. 

“And really,” he said, “I kind of felt like I’d gotten all of this education for nothing. I ended up getting two advanced degrees from Purdue that hardly cost me anything.”

Sources:

https://history.house.gov/HouseRecord/Detail/15032436195

https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-space-races-impact-on-math-science-education-in-the-us.html