{"id":114876,"date":"2021-10-29T10:46:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T14:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=114876"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:44:10","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:44:10","slug":"ddn-engineering-into-action-wright-state-grad-gives-back-opens-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2021\/10\/29\/ddn-engineering-into-action-wright-state-grad-gives-back-opens-doors\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Daily News: Engineering into action: Wright State grad gives back, opens doors"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Inspiring the next generation of engineers has inspired Wright State graduate Bill Miller to including the College of Engineering and Computer Science in his estate.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bill Miller knows that getting through college can be a struggle for many students. As a young man growing up in Brookville, he recognized that a state university would be his only affordable option for college.<\/p>\n

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After one year at Bowling Green State University, Miller had used all his hard-earned savings. He decided to return home and commute to Wright State University to finish his degree.<\/p>\n

As he carpooled to campus with his best friend from high school and began attending engineering classes, Miller quickly realized that most of his Wright State classmates were working part-time jobs and paying their own way through school. Just like him, all of the students were there to learn, not party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Miller did have a distinct advantage over his classmates. He worked at Dayton-based Hohman Plating, where he could get valuable real-world experience and could see the engineering principles that he was studying put into action.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cI felt I had a heads-up on everybody else,\u201d said Miller. \u201cI could apply what I was learning right away.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After graduating from Wright State in 1975 with a degree in systems engineering, Miller was hired on full time at Hohman Plating as a process engineer. Since then, he has held almost every position within the company including facilities manager, quality manager, general manager, vice president, president, and now CEO and the self-proclaimed chief engineering officer.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Miller purchased stock until he was the majority owner of Hohman Plating. Six years ago, he hired a president to run the company, so he could focus on what he loves most \u2014 strategy, coaching and engineering.<\/p>\n

Five decades after he first joined Hohman Plating, Miller still thrives on the company\u2019s high-energy environment, where every day is different and there is a never-ending supply of challenges in need of creative solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is high variability of work. After co-oping, I knew I needed that variety. At Hohman Plating, you\u2019ve always got five balls in the air,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery day, we get a part that has some degree of difficulty for us to design a process. Working through that and figuring out how to do difficult parts excites and inspires me. Some of the parts that we do \u2014 we\u2019re the only people in the world that plate them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with parts that are challenging to coat is Hohman\u2019s specialty. The company\u2019s 180 employees utilize around 200 unique processes to plate parts of varying shapes, configurations and base metals. Hohman serves more than 1,000 customers in a variety of industries, including the military and aerospace.<\/p>\n

Many of the parts Hohman plates are utilized in the mechanics, hydraulics systems, jet engines, pneumatics, and control systems of aircrafts. The company also works with NASA. Hohman\u2019s coatings can be found on parts as far away as the moon and Mars, where they grace rocket engines, satellites, the space station and Mars Rovers.<\/p>\n

Miller is enthusiastic about sharing his passion for engineering with today\u2019s college students. Hohman Plating\u2019s co-op program provides valuable, hands-on experience to engineering majors from Wright State and other universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to help students get the same opportunities I had,\u201d said Miller.<\/p>\n

So far, the co-op program has been a win-win for both the students and Hohman Plating.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re good for the business, and we get positive feedback from the co-ops,\u201d said Miller. \u201cMost of them say \u2018This is the best place I\u2019ve ever co-opted, because I was doing something meaningful and could see immediate results.\u2019 They just love their experience here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspiring the next generation of engineers has also influenced Miller\u2019s philanthropy. For years, he has been making annual gifts to Wright State\u2019s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He recently elevated his commitment by including the college in his estate.<\/p>\n

Miller\u2019s planned gift will make an even greater impact, since the Wright State University Foundation is currently offering a 10% match on the face value of estate gifts, up to a maximum of $10,000. Donors may designate the foundation\u2019s match to a current-use Wright State fund of their choosing.<\/p>\n

Miller is applying the foundation\u2019s match to the senior design capstone project for industrial and systems engineering (ISE) majors in the Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering.<\/p>\n

About 20-30 ISE students participate in the capstone project during a typical year, where they apply all of the skills that they have learned in the classroom to solve real-world problems proposed by local industry partners, said Subhashini Ganapathy, associate professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are grateful that Hohman Plating chose to support the ISE capstone design project with the foundation\u2019s match,\u201d said Ganapathy. \u201cThe match will help provide materials and supplies so students don\u2019t have to just work on simulation. They can do some real implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Miller, forging a corporate partnership between Hohman Plating and Wright State is another outlet for encouraging students to discover their passions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to have some of Wright State\u2019s students get as excited as I am about engineering and how they fit into that world,\u201d he said. \u201cHelping people identify their talents and being able to use their talents within engineering is energizing me.\u201d<\/p>\n

View the original story at daytondailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bill Miller knows that getting through college can be a struggle for many students. As a young man growing up in Brookville, he recognized that a state university would be his only affordable option for college. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":113878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114876"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145243,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114876\/revisions\/145243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}