Alumni

John Drake is serious about giving back to his alma mater. He attributes his success in large part to "the training and rigor of a Michigan Tech education with its insistence on understanding." Drake earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1964 and a master’s in business administration in 1969. "Nobody was better prepared to understand and solve problems than Tech grads were," he says. . . .

John is the retired owner/CEO of Dorsey-Alexander Inc., Cincinnati Controls Inc., and four other motion control, sensor, and machine guarding safety control companies. He started his career as a design engineer for Dynapar Corp, designing digital industrial counters and kinematics control systems.  He and his family moved to Loveland Ohio in 1976 to work with Dorsey-Alexander Inc. as a Sales Engineer and had a hand . . .

Donald G. Wheatley went to work for General Motors in 1963. He worked on the guidance systems doing vibration and fatigue analysis for the Apollo project. Out of the sixty new hires on the project, he was the only one remaining at the end. He also did some work on the main battle tank. Don then accepted an offer from Ford, where he worked on a small team to define the new Ford Maverick. He later led the team that designed . . .

Joan graduated from Michigan Tech in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. She subsequently earned her master's degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1984. Post Michigan Tech she was hired as an engineer with the Advance Development Department of Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles and was given a Top Secret clearance. She designed and developed a working prototype . . .