Dr. Darrel Chenoweth ‘64 experienced a wide range of successes in industry and academia. His reflections on his career -- specifically, the role his education at Kettering University (then General Motors Institute) and co-op experience at the Chevrolet-Muncie Transmission Plant in Muncie, Indiana -- inspired him to give back.

“For me it has become obvious that almost every success I experienced in my engineering career was influenced by the excellent education I received at GMI/Kettering and the real world experience I received at Chevrolet-Muncie as I started my career,” Chenoweth said.

In 2013, Chenoweth set up the Chenoweth-Muncie Endowed Scholarship as a way to help future generations of students.

“I suppose I feel a certain responsibility to give back to those who helped me,” Chenoweth said.  “The scholarship is a good way to do that, recognizing both GMI/Kettering and Chevrolet-Muncie. I hope the scholarship will enable future students who co-op with General Motors to achieve their goal of an excellent engineering education at Kettering University.”

After graduating from Kettering University and a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University, Chenoweth returned to Chevrolet-Muncie for nine months, working in the Plant Engineering Department. He then decided to return to Auburn to pursue a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering.

“I was at Auburn during the height of the NASA Apollo Program, and many engineering graduate students, including me, worked on research contracts related to the Saturn V launch vehicle that was being designed and built at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama,” he said. “It was cutting edge engineering experience, and it paid my way through graduate school.”

After completing his PhD in 1969, Chenoweth left General Motors and joined LTV Aerospace Corporation in Dallas, Texas, as an Avionics Specialist working on the A-7 Corsair and the F-8 Crusader airplanes.

However, during his graduate studies, he discovered another love -- teaching.

“While I was at Auburn I taught a course in circuits, and I discovered that I liked teaching very much,” he said. “An opportunity to teach at the University of Louisville brought me back to the Midwest in 1970, where I was hired as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. I was able to teach as well as do sponsored research on grants and contracts for the Department of Defense and NASA.”

Chenoweth became the chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department in 1992 and directed more than 50 master’s and PhD students. He retired from the University of Louisville in 2006 as Associate Vice President for Research.

Once constant throughout his career has been the foundation that his experience at Kettering/GMI provided for him.

“Looking back, it’s easy to see that my experience at GMI/Kettering was a key factor as I began my career in  engineering academia,” Chenoweth said. “The GMI/Kettering education was excellent, which served me well in graduate school – and later in my teaching career. And the co-op experience carried over to my academic career at the University of Louisville, where a co-op internship is a mandatory part of its engineering programs. Because of GMI/Kettering, I already knew the value of the co-op internship when I came to the University of Louisville to teach engineering.”