The Oregon State University Sesquicentennial Oral History Project

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Jim Welty Oral History Interview. April 21, 2015

Jim Welty Oral History Interview

Life history interview conducted by Mike Dicianna.

April 21, 2015

Location:  Valley Library, Oregon State University.

Jim Welty (b. 1933) earned three degrees from Oregon State, completing bachelor's (1954) and master's (1959) studies in Mechanical Engineering, as well as a doctorate in Chemical Engineering, which he finished in 1962. His Ph.D. in hand, Welty was promptly hired to the Oregon State Mechanical Engineering faculty, where he remained until retiring in 1996. During this time, Welty served as department chair for fifteen years, from 1970 to 1985. A respected scholar of fluid dynamics and heat transfer, Welty, along with two OSU colleagues, co-authored a hugely successful textbook that was first published in 1969 and is still used in classrooms today. His interview provides an overview of a personal association with Oregon State's College of Engineering that has few parallels, one that spans parts of seven decades.