Dr. Ronald Mattis, associate professor of engineering and one of Pitt-Bradford’s longest-serving members of the faculty, retired this year after 36 years of service.
Mattis had taught at Pitt-Bradford since 1985. He was a W.C. Foster Fellows Visiting Fellow at the U.S. Department of State Verification and Compliance Bureau, Office of Nuclear Affairs, and has served as a consultant for the department.
As director of the two-year engineering program, Mattis helped students find internship opportunities and assisted them in transferring to the university’s Pittsburgh campus for the completion of their program. He regularly communicated with the engineering school in Pittsburgh to coordinate the engineering program and kept its curriculum current.
He adapted the campus’s two-year engineering program that required continuing on at another school into a stand-alone Associate of Science in engineering science degree that could also be used toward a Bachelor of Science degree.
In 2015, he received the Chairs’ Faculty Teaching Award for excellence in teaching.
“Ron has proven himself to be a dedicated and talented teacher,” said Dr. Yong-Zhou Chen, professor of mathematics, who nominated Mattis for the award.
“Ron’s teaching evaluations are always well above the Engineering School mean,” Chen said. “He always pays attention to students' understanding of the material, problem-solving ability and class participation.”
In the years before his retirement, he worked with Dr. Matt Kropf, associate professor natural sciences/petroleum technology, and Klaus Wuersig, retired assistant professor of engineering, to develop the engineering technology programs set to launch next year, including working on the curricula and proposed lab equipment lists. In addition, he worked with architects during the design of the campus’s new Engineering and Information Technologies building slated for completion next fall.
Mattis lives in Kane, Pa.
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