Stories from Watson College, decade by decade

1980s: Lyle Feisel

The idea of an engineering school at Binghamton was first proposed in the 1960s, but it didn’t gain momentum until the early 1980s. Research commissioned by New York state predicted a shortage of engineers in the decades ahead, and SUNY leadership joined with regional industrial powerhouses such as IBM Corp., General Electric and Universal Instruments to support the plan.

Tasked with making this vision a reality was Founding Dean Lyle Feisel, who spent nearly 20 years as an electrical engineering faculty member, researcher and department head at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology before coming to Binghamton. The new Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering, Applied Science and Technology was built on the scaffolding of the School of Advanced Technology (SAT), but it radically changed how faculty members taught their students.

“The School of Advanced Technology was a great concept in its day, but it consisted of a group of professors who didn’t have that much in common — they were individual scholars,” Feisel says. “They did some great things, but when you had a need for people who have the engineering discipline, it was not fulfilling the mission.”

Hiring senior faculty was a particular challenge, because Watson needed not only younger professors but also experienced hands to help steer the ship. Feisel guided the creation and restructuring of many programs that continue to thrive today, and he oversaw the accreditation process from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and similar oversight organizations.

In 1995, he argued successfully to enroll students as first-year undergraduates rather than as transfers from other colleges for their junior and senior years. The policy shift allowed better planning for the future.

“We were constantly growing and changing,” he says. “Every year, new programs were added. If you look at the number of degrees in 1983 and the number we had in 2001, there’s no comparison at all. You always looked over the horizon. You wanted to go over there and see what opportunities might exist.”

Feisel retired after 18 years at Watson’s helm: “I had a feeling that I had done about all I was going to do, and it was time for the school to stop adding a new program every year and consolidate the organization. My successor, Roger Westgate, did a wonderful job of that.”

After leaving Watson, Feisel and his wife traveled around the U.S. and spent time with their grandchildren. He also served on the ABET board of directors, was a vice president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and was president of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

His nearly two decades as Watson dean remain a special time: “It was such an honor for me to be in that position. When you stop and think about it, SUNY Binghamton — as it was known then — hiring a guy from South Dakota to come in and be the dean of a new school made no sense at all. But I’m sure glad they did.”

1990s: Michael McGoff

When Michael McGoff ’69, MA ’74, PhD ’80, remembers the 1990s at the Watson School, he compares it to the classic variety television act where performers kept a dozen plates spinning atop poles at the same time. It required a lot of rushing around to make sure none of those plates hit the floor.

Before Watson was established in 1983, McGoff had worked his way up the ladder to assistant dean at the SAT. As acting dean in 1982-83, his guidance eased the transition to an engineering school. He stayed as assistant dean and later associate dean for another 17 years, helping to keep the various plates in the air.

In the 1990s, under Feisel’s leadership, Watson continued to add discipline-specific graduate programs and degrees, as well as build the existing Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Advanced Technology degrees with specializations inherited from the SAT.

“These approvals took substantial effort,” McGoff says. “For instance, to be able to offer the doctorate in engineering disciplines required a statewide Master Plan Amendment! As you might guess with the SUNY system and the New York State Education Department, processes are extensive and labyrinthine.”

Stories from Watson’s evolution Watson also continued to upgrade and expand its laboratories not only to enhance its graduate offerings and faculty research, but also to give leading-edge lab experiences to undergraduates.

Opening enrollment to all undergraduate levels in fall 1995, not just juniors and seniors, meant additions and adaptations to meet the needs of younger, less experienced students. The Watson Advising Office staff grew, and the Engineering Design Division was created to offer a common engineering experience for lower-division students who would then have time to decide which engineering discipline to pursue.

“A foundation for excellence and quality in academic pursuits, teaching, research and service was established in those early formative years and, by all accounts, continues to this day,” McGoff says.

In 2000, McGoff moved to the Office of the Provost, where he helped oversee all of Binghamton University in various roles and ultimately became senior vice provost and chief financial officer. The lifelong Southern Tier resident retired in 2021 after 53 years of working at Binghamton, but he remains engaged with the University — especially where he began his career those many years ago.

“My heart is still in Watson,” he says. “To see it grow from SAT to the Watson School to Watson College has been great.”

2000s: Douglas Summerville

When Doug Summerville, MS ’94, PhD ’97, arrived at Binghamton University as a graduate student in the early1990s, the Watson School was not yet 10 years old. Many of his classmates studying electrical engineering worked in local industry and attended Watson part time to attain their master’s degrees.

His PhD dissertation focused on how processors could be better interconnected to boost computing power, and he spent a couple of years as a junior faculty member at the University of Hawaii. That school’s pioneering ALOHAnet protocols are essential to Ethernet, Wi-Fi and mobile phone networks.

Summerville jumped at the first chance to return to Binghamton in 1999. He’d spent too much time traveling from Hawaii to see family on the East Coast and remaining connected to research sponsors from the National Science Foundation. Plus, he says with a laugh, “the weather was the same every day — beautiful. It was so boring!”

Returning to the Watson School as an assistant professor, he found a few important things had changed during the time he’d been away. The first four-year undergraduates had earned their bachelor’s degrees — with more being enrolled every semester — and research had become more important to his new colleagues.

“We had a lot of new faculty at that time, and it was a very different culture than when I was a student,” he says. “But I was already used to that from Hawaii, because they were a research-focused school.”

A large part of Summerville’s mandate was to build Watson’s computer engineering curriculum, combining parts of electrical engineering and computer science into courses such as digital systems design and computer communications.

In a trend throughout Watson departments in the 2000s, “the lessons went from being theoretical to very hands-on,” he says. “We slowly turned the ship by taking out a course here and adding our own course there. We became lab-focused — I think about two-thirds of our computer engineering courses now have labs.”

While working toward tenure, Summerville also stepped forward for activities around campus that earned him a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service, such as serving on Faculty Senate committees on academic honesty and bylaw reviews and taking on the position of undergraduate director for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Those experiences served him well when he was named the interim ECE chair in 2015 and then assumed the role permanently in 2016.

“When I was younger, I was never shy about expressing my opinion,” he says. “I would just go after what I wanted, but I learned to build alliances and get consensus before trying to do radical things.”

2010s: Bahgat Sammakia

As the new millennium dawned, one thing became increasingly clear: For Binghamton University and the Watson School to grow and thrive as their leaders wanted, they needed more space — especially for research.

The Innovative Technologies Complex (ITC), located across Murray Hill Road from the main part of campus, offered those facilities. Starting with the Biotechnology Building (renovated from former NYSEG offices), the ITC expanded into four interconnected structures that also include the Center of Excellence, the Smart Energy Research and Development Facility, and the Engineering and Science Building.

Funded by $66 million from New York state, the two-story Engineering and Science Building features 125,000 square feet for flexible state-of-the-art lab spaces, the Watson dean’s office and two Watson departments (Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering), with Biomedical Engineering around the corner in the Biotech Building.

Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Vice President for Research Bahgat Sammakia credits the growth to President Harvey Stenger’s leadership and commitment to research as part of the University’s Road Map to Premier strategic plan.

“Many colleagues from much bigger universities come here to visit, and they say, ‘You guys don’t know how lucky you are,’ because the ITC is all just research, with new labs and new equipment,” Sammakia says.

“Also, because the buildings are connected, someone from physics or chemistry doesn’t need to go outside — they can walk indoors and go to biomedical engineering, or they can go to mechanical or electrical engineering. There is this feeling that everything is a single unit, and that encourages collaboration.”

Sammakia joined Watson’s mechanical engineering faculty in 1998 after a career in microchip manufacturing at IBM Corp. in Endicott. At Binghamton, he is the founding director of S3IP, an interdisciplinary New York State Center of Excellence focused on electronics packaging and energy efficiency. He also serves as the director for the Energy Efficient Electronic Systems Center and the Center for Heterogeneous Integration Research in Packaging (CHIRP).

In 2012, Sammakia became VP overseeing all of Binghamton’s diverse research, with Watson as the biggest percentage (totaling $20 million in expenditures last year). He praises Dean Hari Srihari’s leadership for inspiring Watson’s faculty and staff to seek more funding opportunities from industry and government partnerships.

“This wasn’t by accident,” Sammakia says. “Hari has planned everything, day by day. He works 90 hours a week to make that happen, and today we are approaching 50% of the total research expenditures on campus coming from Watson. If it wasn’t for space and infrastructure, I think we could grow much faster.”