Lyle D Feisel

In a nutshell

Lyle Feisel is an engineer who has also worked as a farm hand, metalsmith, construction worker, truck driver, sailor, theater manager, association executive, professor and university dean. These experiences, together with extensive international travel and a year living and working overseas provide a rich background from which Lyle’s Laws are derived.

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Lyle Feisel grew up on a farm in central Iowa and received his elementary education in a one room country schoolhouse. After graduating from a small town high school, he attended Iowa State University for one year, just long enough to meet the two loves of his life – his now wife Dorothy and the profession of engineering. When the money ran out, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy where he served three years at sea, helping to test the Navy’s newly developed surface-to air-missiles. By the end of his enlistment, he and Dorothy had married and they returned to Iowa State where, over the next six years, they gained three children and Lyle earned three engineering degrees, including a Ph.D.

Leaving Iowa State in 1964, Dr. Feisel joined the faculty of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology where he worked for the next nineteen years, teaching engineering and doing research. Those years were punctuated by brief periods of industrial employment at IBM and Northrop, adding to previous industrial experience at Collins Radio and Honeywell. The Feisels lived for a year in Taiwan where Dr. Feisel was a National Visiting Professor at Cheng Kung University in Tainan. They also took a sabbatical leave to fill the Wachtmeister Chair in Science and Engineering at the Virginia Military Institute.

In 1983, Dr. Feisel became the founding dean of the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science at the State University of New York at Binghamton. There he reorganized and integrated some existing technical programs and developed several undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering. In his eighteen years at Binghamton he helped the School to establish a reputation for high academic standards, outstanding research productivity and service to the local community. Toward the end of his tenure, he was granted a four-month leave of absence and he and Dorothy took a free style trip through Europe and around the world.

Dr. Feisel retired in 2001 but has continued to work with various societies and to serve as an adviser, consultant and evaluator for universities in the United States and several other countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America. He holds two patents and has published extensively on technical subjects, the theory and practice of education and social and professional issues. He has received numerous honors and awards for teaching, service and publication.