Earlier this year, Temple Engineering announced the creation of a new BS program—Industrial and Systems Engineering—designed to blend business and engineering. In November, Andrew Marsh (ENG, 82) came back to campus to stress the importance of experience in both fields to freshmen interested in the new major.

He should know. Though Marsh studied electrical engineering at Temple, the 2017 Gallery of Success honoree is President and CEO of Plug Power, a New York-based fuel cell manufacturer, providing solutions for customers such as Walmart, Kroger, BMW and Procter and Gamble.

"This is a company that will do about $190 million in product revenue this year. We actually use more liquid hydrogen than NASA," Marsh said, when describing his post-Temple journey, which included his first position at Bell Laboratories.

"That was like going to work for Google or Facebook today," he said.

Marsh, who also earned graduate degrees from Duke University and SMU, stressed both the "soft skills" and frame of mind that molded his transition from design engineer to the C-suite.

"You better be a generalist, and a really good listener. That's the interesting part of the program Temple is proposing to me, because ideas I was proposing from a systems solution standpoint, does it match with the company's capabilities? And can the company make money on it?" he said.

The 128-credit hour undergraduate degree will build on coursework in engineering, math and sciences blended with business over eight semesters. Students will learn the necessary analytical, computational and experimental practices for system integration in nine new courses covering operations management and research, production planning and control, quality assurance, simulation, logistics and supply chain management.
 

Students interested in making the change to the ISE program may visit the Center for Undergraduate Advising and Student Affairs.