6 | L E H I G H B U L L E T I N C A M P U S $2.5 Million Endowment to Create Chemical Engineering Chair Mike Zisman ’70 honors professor who changed his life Byhis ownadmission,Mike Zisman ’70was not a particularly good student during his first two years at Lehigh. An encounter with chemical and bioengineering Professor William L. Luyben changed all that. “I remember how Professor Luyben pulled me aside one day and said, basically, ‘Shape up or ship out,’ ” recalled Zisman. “It changed my life—I just woke up and thought, ‘Well, maybe I should try studying. Maybe that would make a difference.’ And I made the dean’s list after that.” Grateful for the impact that Luyben had on his life, Zisman, founder and co-CEO of Golf Genius Software, and his wife, Linda Gamble, recently made a $2.5 million gift to endow a faculty chair in honor of Luyben, who was his chemical and biomolecular engineering professor and who has been a Lehigh faculty member since 1967. The chair will initially be called the Zisman Family Chair in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Upon Luyben’s future retirement from Lehigh, it will be known as the William L. Luyben Chair, with the chairholder embodying the qualities of Luyben as “an exemplary teacher, mentor and distinguished researcher.” Luyben further impacted Zisman’s life and career trajectory by introducing his students to the use of computers for simulation. “I loved doing those simulations,” Zisman recalled. “It helped me realize that I really loved computer programming.” After graduating with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering and working briefly at DuPont, Zisman went on to earn a master’s in systems engineering and a doctorate in decisions sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a faculty member at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) until 1979, when he founded Soft-Switch, a company that, in a pre-internet era, allowed users of different computer brands the ground-breaking ability to email each other. Professor William L. Luyben (left) with Mike Zisman ’70. “PROFESSOR LUYBEN HAD MORE IMPACT ON MY LIFE THAN ANYBODY. AND I’M GRATEFUL.” —MIKE ZISMAN ’70 J O H N K I S H I V
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