From the issue dated September 3, 2004
|
|
|
Under the Hood
Ever since he was a teenager, Marcus D. Ashford has been happiest when peering under the hood of an automobile. Now he has managed to create an academic career out of his passion. Mr. Ashford, who is 32, earned his Ph.D. in May in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, where he spent his days working on an SUV engine in the name of research. "If it weren't for all of the computers and sensors, you would think we were just a bunch of grease monkeys," Mr. Ashford says of his colleagues in the mechanical-engineering lab. But Mr. Ashford's groundbreaking design of a device that significantly reduced auto emissions in a Lincoln Navigator led to a patent held by the university and the Ford Motor Company. It also helped Mr. Ashford to skip over a postdoctoral position and nab a faculty job at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. "What I really expected was that I'd take a shot at some jobs, nobody would bite, and I would do a postdoc," explains Mr. Ashford, who considered such positions at the Sandia National Laboratory, in Albuquerque, and the Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago. "With money so tight, people are really interested in guys who already have a bunch of proposals under their belt." But before Mr. Ashford could make a decision about a postdoc, Alabama offered him a job. William H. Sutton, who heads the mechanical-engineering department at Alabama, where Mr. Ashford will be an assistant professor this fall, says: "He gave his talk and he just knocked our socks off. Very rarely do you see somebody at this stage who has the kind of composure and the capability to communicate ideas that he has." Not only does Mr. Ashford's work make him a good fit with the university's Center for Advanced Vehicle Technologies, but he also brings something that Alabama's mechanical-engineering department lacks: diversity. Mr. Ashford will be the department's only black professor, something that Mr. Sutton acknowledges made him attractive. "It gave him an opportunity," he says, "but at the same time, if he were not a great person, we wouldn't want him." Building Something Mr. Ashford says he did not even bother applying for faculty jobs at any of the country's top mechanical-engineering programs. "These places hire eight guys for one tenured position," he says. Alabama's department has already told Mr. Ashford, "'We want you to get tenure,'" he says. "For me," he adds, "it seems a lot more exciting to help build something than to go to a place that already has its reputation made." Taking the job at Alabama was also a lifestyle decision for Mr. Ashford. He and his wife have a 3-year-old son and another child on the way. "I actually want to spend time with them," he says. Alabama, he says, "is the kind of place where I can live 10 minutes away from work and ride my bike to school." The young professor also wants to indulge in hobbies like water-skiing and autocross, a sport where car drivers race against the clock around an obstacle-filled course. There is a new course in Birmingham. Education has always been important in Mr. Ashford's family, where he is the youngest of three children. His brother holds both a medical degree and a Ph.D.; his father has a master's degree in art education; and both his sister and his mother hold doctorates in mathematics and teach at Southern University at Baton Rouge. Mr. Ashford grew up in the small town of Zachary, La., and spent a lot of time during the summers wandering around the nearby campus of Southern. Still, he took a circuitous route to his own academic career. When he was a kid, he liked to fool with old radios, computers, and battery-powered motors. "I loved taking things apart and figuring out how they worked," he says. He also watched his father tinker with a prized 1971 Dodge Charger, and eventually got a subscription of his own to Car and Driver magazine. After graduating from a selective magnet high school in Louisiana, Mr. Ashford was accepted by Cornell and Stanford Universities. But he entered Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge instead because it offered him a full ride on tuition. It was there, after a counselor from the engineering program made her pitch, that he first considered an engineering career. "I told her, 'I love cars. I want to be in Car and Driver one day,'" Mr. Ashford recalls. "And she said, 'You can either go race cars, or you can design them.' That conversation really helped everything gel for me." Before Mr. Ashford graduated with his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1994, what is now the ExxonMobil Chemical Company offered him a job at its Baton Rouge Chemical Complex. He worked 12- to 14-hour days, maintaining the company's production equipment. But Mr. Ashford did not forget his love of cars. Eighteen months after he started at Exxon he quit to join the Ford Motor Company as part of a special program that let engineers try out several different jobs. The ones that interested Mr. Ashford most were in the research division. "I wasn't qualified for that," he says. "I needed at least a master's degree." So in 1998, Mr. Ashford enrolled at UT to pursue his doctorate, joining the engines-research program. His dissertation project involved designing a device that would solve a longstanding auto-emissions problem. Although catalytic converters are nearly 100 percent efficient in destroying auto emissions, they don't work until a vehicle has been running for a few minutes. It is during those first few minutes, however, that the engine produces the highest concentration of smog-forming compounds. Mr. Ashford developed an engine distillation system that separates fuel so that the small portion of gasoline that vaporizes the most quickly -- and therefore produces the fewest emissions -- can be used to start the vehicle. The device virtually eliminated the so-called "cold-start problem," reducing the Navigator's emissions by 80 percent. That's important, says Mr. Ashford, because "emissions standards drive everything" in the auto industry. The National Society of Black Engineers recognized Mr. Ashford's achievement last February by naming him its National Graduate Student of the Year. At Alabama, Mr. Ashford will continue his work on gasoline engines and also move into hybrid and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Mr. Sutton says the young professor's work outside academe is a plus. "He has already started talking to me about potential donors, and mentioned specific companies he might be able to go out and get some equipment from," says Mr. Sutton. "He knows how the game is played." Mr. Ashford says it doesn't bother him that he was chosen for the position at Alabama in part because he is black. "Maybe when I was 17, I would have been offended," he says, "but I understand what I can accomplish now with an opportunity like this." One of his charges from the department, he says, is to help bring in minority graduate students. He is happy to try. "Remember, I went to Louisiana State University, a large, predominantly white university in the South," he says. "I never met a black faculty member in engineering there." So he wants to return to the South: "I want kids to see me." http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 51, Issue 2, Page A11 | |||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education