USD Magazine, Winter/Spring 1997

ALCALA

4 . Space Travel. "An area in which we are at the very beginning."

Fowler, Hoehn and Thorsnes Join USD Board of Trustees R onald L. Fowler, Robert A. Hoehn and Michael T. Thorsnes '68 (J.D.) were recently elected to USD's board of trustees. Ronald Fowler is president and chief executive officer of Liquid Investments Inc., the parent company of numerous operating entities in California and Colorado, including Mesa Distributing Co., Inc., in San Diego. He also is chairman of the board for Columbia Distributing Co., and he sits on the advisory boards of The Seagram Beverage Co., Northwest Airlines Enter– tainment, Boston Beer Distributor Council and Brick Brewing Co. Ltd. Fowler has been active in sports man– agement as well. He was owner/managing general partner of the San Diego Sockers from 1988 to 1991. He is the founding chair of the San Diego International Sports Council and a past president of the San Diego Hall of Champions. Robert Hoehn is vice president of Hoehn Motors Inc. and president of The Hoehn Co. He followed his father and grandfather into the automobile dealership industry. A native of Memphis, Tenn., he moved to California after he graduated from Bowdoin College with a dual bachelor's degree in English and art history. Hoehn serves on the boards of Catholic Charities, the Timken Museum of Art and the Balboa Art Conservation Center. He previously served on the boards of the San Diego Museum of Art, the San Diego Opera and Casa de Esperanza, a Tijuana orphanage. Michael T. Thorsnes is a partner and founder of Thorsnes, Bartolotta, McGuire & Padilla, a San Diego law firm that spe– cializes in civil litigation in state and feder– al courts. Thorsnes is a member of the School of Law's board of visitors. Thorsnes is a two-time recipient of the Outstanding Trial Lawyer Award from the San Diego Trial Lawyers Association. He is a member of The Association of Trial Lawyers of America and of Consumer Attorneys of San Diego, and he has emeri– tus status on the board of governors of the American Business Trial Lawyers Association, San Diego Chapter.

5. Electronics and Computers. "We've come a long way in a short time, from vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits." 6. Invention of the Laser. "Opened the door to a wide variety of inventions, some as simple as supermarket bar code scanners and compact discs, some as complicated as laser surgery, optical communication and light weapons." 7. Radio, Television and Radar. "Radio and television have had major social impacts. Without radar, a direct relative of the first two, modern air transport and weather forecasting would be impossible." 8. Composite Materials. "The advances in plastics, fiberglass and other materials have brought about tremendous changes in the products we manufacture and use." 9. Nuclear Reactors. "Not as significant in this country, but in other countries a major source of electrical power." 1D. Xerography. "The photocopying machine and other duplication technology, such as magnetic recording, have brought about major changes in the fields of business and education."

USO Tap 10: Engineering Feats T his edition of the USD Top 10 salutes the industrial and systems engineering and electrical engineering programs at USD. Department chair Thomas Schubert, who has taught at the university since the engineering program was started in 1987, offers his list of the top engineering feats of this century. "It's difficult to assign a single theme to a list of engineering feats because the field of engineering is so broad based," Schubert notes. "Essentially, engineering takes ideas and turns them into something you can work with. We look at a problem, see the alternatives, and try to identify the best alternative and how it can be achieved." Schubert agrees that not everyone would look at the following items and immediately think of engineering, but credits engineers as integral to each of these achievements. 1. Nationwide Electrification and the Telephone System. "An amazing effort by engineers and thousands of others to bring electricity and telephone service to the nation." 2. National Highway System. "It's hard to imagine the difference between what the roads are like now and what they were like before this project was undertaken. The speed of travel was increased enormously." 3 . Flight. "People might question whether the Wright brothers were engineers or bicycle mechanics, but engineering springs from the mechanical tradition."

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