Hale
the SDM Chief
By
Amy
MacMillan, LFM-SDM Communications
Assistant – September 21, 2006
It
was 1967 – the Summer of Love
– and 18-year-old Pat Hale expected
to be drafted, so he enlisted in the
Navy. Hale very much wanted to follow
in the footsteps of his father, Verne,
a proud Air Force pilot who spent
the last years of World War II in
a German POW camp after his plane
was shot down. But, the younger Hale
was dreadfully nearsighted and unable
to fly planes. The Air Force didn't
seem as enticing without the possibility
of flying, so he headed for the seas,
a choice he never regretted.
Pat
Hale, Director of the SDM Fellows
Program, has played an instrumental
role in the program since its
inception. |
Pat
Hale in 1977, when he was stationed
on the U.S.S. Schenectady. |
Western
Roots
Hale, 57, was born in Wyoming, but
grew up as an "Air Force Brat,"
with his two younger sisters, Karen
and Diana. While their father transferred
around in the service, their mother,
Elaine, typically found work as a
choir director at the local church.
Hale recalls once moving six times
in one year, but the transitions only
made him more relaxed in any social
situation. “More than anything
else, it made me comfortable moving
around and getting to know people
quickly. I generally am not uncomfortable
being in a group of people who I don’t
know well," he says today.
During
the Vietnam War, he was in the submarine
service and was deployed on supporting
operations, but saw no time ‘on
the ground’ in Vietnam. “I
could tell you what I was doing, but
then I’d have to kill you,”
he jokes. The late 1960s were a tense
time as many young Americans protested
the war in Asia, but Hale was pragmatic
enough to see both sides. One of his
best friends was a conscientious objector,
and this never affected their friendship.
"I felt that it was his right,
and he was absolutely sincere in his
beliefs. One of the reasons I was
in the military was so that he would
have the right to feel that way."
A
Naval Career
After eight years in the Navy, Hale
was selected for the Naval Enlisted
Scientific Education Program, which
sent enlisted personnel to college
to study science or engineering. Following
completion, graduates owed the Navy
five years of service as an officer.
Hale chose to study geophysical oceanography
at the University of Washington in
Seattle. "I completely misunderstood
what oceanography was, but I took
it as a major." Like many, Hale
thought oceanography would open doors
to the glamorous world of the likes
of Jacques Cousteau. "In oceanography,
the only 'animals' you study are plankton,"
he laughs. "If you want to be
Jacques Cousteau, you study marine
zoology," he adds.
But,
Hale had always had an interest in
math and science, and the Navy's nuclear
power program and the study of hydrodynamics
and mineralogy only intensified it.
He liked serving in the military,
and even enjoyed living on a submarine
for months at a time. "The submarine
world is a unique community,"
he explains. "It's almost like
a merit-based community – if
there is such a thing – in the
military. There's much less emphasis
put on rank, than there is on whether
you are qualified or not. You depend
on one another pretty much all the
time," he says.
He
went on to earn an S.M. in Naval Architecture
and Marine Engineering and the Ocean
Engineer degree from MIT in 1984.
He also has an MBA from National University
in San Diego.
When
he retired from the Navy in 1989,
his final assignment was as Department
Head, Combat/Weapons Systems, Supervisor
of Shipbuilding Conversion and Repair
in Groton, CT.
That
same year, he took a position with
Draper Laboratory as a systems engineer
and later program manager for unmanned
undersea vehicles. Four years later,
he became director of Systems Engineering
at Draper, before he left to take
the same position at Otis Elevator
Company. In fact, Hale successfully
established the first organization
and processes for Systems Engineering
at the United Technologies company.
MIT
Beckons
While at Otis, he became involved
as an industry stakeholder in the
plans for a new engineering degree
at MIT – a program where students
could earn a master of science in
engineering and management. Prior
to the creation of this System Design
and Management (SDM) degree, engineers
had only the narrow choice of an executive
MBA program, which didn't address
technical requirements, Hale remembers.
"We needed more engineers who
could understand the theory and practice
of systems architecture and the implications
of systems thinking," he says.
The SDM program, the first degree-granting
distance learning program at MIT was
born. It celebrates its 10th anniversary
this year.
In
2002, he left Otis, and started his
own consulting company, SysteMentor
LLC, where he continued to serve in
an advisory role for SDM, running
the SDM Certificate program. In 2004,
he applied and was selected for the
Director of the SDM Fellows program
position, and he accepted.
Hale
also serves as president-elect of
the International Council on Systems
Engineering (INCOSE), an organization
he's been a member of for 12 years.
He will assume the office of president
for the 2008-2009 term. INCOSE is
a global professional society for
systems engineers. "Pat has invested
many personal hours in INCOSE over
the last decade," says fellow
colleague and ESD Senior Lecturer
Donna Rhodes. "He is always one
of the first people to volunteer to
work difficult tasks. I've also taught
systems engineering courses with Pat.
His knowledge and experience of the
systems engineering field are outstanding,
and his personal style makes such
collaborations truly enjoyable."
At
Home
Following years of military moves,
Hale has finally put down some roots.
“I’m getting over this,
but between my years of traveling
for work and my time in the Navy,
I got to the point where if I lived
someplace for longer than about a
year-and-a-half, I started getting
antsy to move.” Today, he's
lived in the same Middleboro, Mass.
house with his wife Janet, for the
past seven years.
His
enthusiasm for music takes up much
of his spare time. Growing up, he
played piano, woodwinds, and guitar.
Today Hale plays guitar and sings
on a regular basis for his church.
His musical heroes include Tina Turner,
Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Eric Clapton,
and jazz favorite Lionel Hampton.
An
avowed technophile, Hale owns three
iPods, and claims the one thing he
could not live without is his pocket
PC. "It's my brain," he
says. And, if none of his gadgets
do what he needs, he'll simply write
or modify a software program to make
it work.
He
drives a hybrid car – one that
runs on gasoline and electric –
but admits that a true fuel cell and
hydrogen economy are a long way off
in the automobile industry. "When
I hear politicians and pundits talking
about how in a couple of years we'll
all be driving fuel-cell based cars,
I think that's probably completely
unrealistic. There are a lot of challenges
– which people are working on
– in terms of producing hydrogen
in quantities to satisfy," he
says.
Hale's
passions, however, extend beyond technical
gadgets and concern for the environment.
He and his wife are both wine connoisseurs,
and share a love for gourmet cooking.
While Janet Hale vigilantly follows
recipes, measuring out ingredients,
her husband takes a surprisingly cavalier
attitude toward recipes, given his
engineering bent. "I'll get a
sense of what a dish is, but I almost
never follow a recipe. I like to taste
as I go along," Hale says.
His
sense of adventure was also evidenced
when he impulsively proposed to Janet
on their second date. He followed
it up three months later with a formal
proposal on a planned trip to Paris
on Valentine's Day in 1999. The two
have eight children and eight grandchildren
between them. Most weekends in the
Hale home are spent entertaining family
with lots of big dinners and time
spent with the grandkids. "We're
family-oriented, and we love watching
them grow up," Hale says.
In
the future, Hale would like to see
systems engineering broaden as a discipline
and plans to use his position in INCOSE
to promote this. He also plans to
teach more courses for SDM, while
he fosters the program's continued
growth. This semester, he is teaching
ESD.930 Systems Engineering Taxonomy
& Semantics.
Retirement
for Hale is a long way off, and although
he has no solid plans, he dreams of
a future where some days he gets to
wake up with "nothing to do."
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