In October 2010, Dexter G. Smith took over as associate dean of the Whiting School’s Engineering for Professionals. The son of a Navy pilot, Smith is an instrument-rated commercial pilot and certified flight instructor. The magazine sat down with him as he took over the cockpit at EP.
When did you first become involved in the Engineering for Professionals program?
My involvement goes way back. I moved to Baltimore in 1980 after finishing my master’s degree in biomedical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I came to take a job as a clinical engineer at Montebello Hospital in Baltimore. I started taking classes in Barton Hall, at what was then the Evening College, a precursor to EP. Many of the students were technicians from Westinghouse, in an eight-year evening program to get their bachelor’s degrees. I had so much respect for those students, working so hard to get that BS in engineering from Hopkins. In 1982, I returned to Rensselaer to pursue my doctoral degree in electrical engineering.
How has EP changed since those days?
Today we have 38 full-time employees at the Dorsey Center in Elkridge, MD, a $22 million budget, and as many as 500 working professionals as part-time instructors in any given year. We are a full-scale professional program within the Whiting School that offers master’s degrees in 15 different disciplines, with five of those degrees offered fully online. We currently have more than 2,200 students at eight education centers in the Baltimore-Washington area. We also offer programs and courses nationally through industry partnerships and online.
What were you doing before you moved to EP?
I joined the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in 1995. Before my current position at EP, I was serving as the biomedicine business area executive at APL, where I was responsible for the funding and personnel of a $30 million business unit. In that position, my responsibilities included developing military projects that would help ensure the acute care and rehabilitation of our soldiers. It was extremely rewarding work since my son is a Ranger-qualified officer in the 82nd Airborne with a tour in Iraq and Purple Heart under his belt.
We worked on projects that included the development and testing of improved body armor; up-to-date medical technology for use in remote areas; and a revolutionary, neural-controlled upper-extremity prosthetic limb (see p. 13). The latter was the largest competitive DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) award ever received by APL. Prior to the biomedical work, I worked on homeland security issues, specializing in facilities characterization and chemo/bio sensor development.
What is your vision for EP’s future?
If you had told me 10 years ago that we would have so many of our students taking courses online, I would not have believed you. We have just kicked off a new round of strategic planning to help determine what EP could and should look like in five to 10 years. I have put together a team of advisors to develop this long-term strategic plan to meet the needs of our students and their employers, and our industry partners, given the recent increases in enrollments in our online and industry partnerships.
Are there any changes that you made right away?
I want our students to feel they are having a meaningful graduate school experience and that they are part of the Hopkins community. I am working to continue to change the perception that EP is somehow separate from the Whiting School and Hopkins. The first thing I did at the Dorsey Center was hang a Johns Hopkins University banner outside my office for students to see as they head to class. There is more work to be done to integrate our EP alumni into the broader Whiting School alumni community, and we are working on that now.
Many EP alums have so much to offer. They are already established in their careers, in some of the best companies and important government agencies, and we want to work with them to broaden the experience for all of our students. We are all part of the Johns Hopkins community.