Engineering Entrepreneurship
Preaching What He Practiced

BY JENNIFER BALDINO BONETT

Tom Cassel means business.

As director of the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program, he guides future engineers and scientists in the art of moving discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace. He does so with such finesse and passion that he has won a notable teaching award and the highest praise of students.

Thomas A.V. Cassel (BSc ’68 MSc ’73 PhD ’79) is the first practice professor at Penn Engineering. In the spring of 1999, a cordial visit with Dean Eduardo Glandt turned into a serious conversation about starting an entrepreneurship program. “I was absolutely delighted when Tom agreed to launch a program here,” says Glandt. “He is a highly successful alumnus who has lived the very experiences he teaches. Who better to mentor our students about the role of entrepreneurship in their engineering careers?” That fall, after a 20-year career of entrepreneurial business leadership, Cassel returned to Penn. He brought with him a rich portfolio of experience, founded on his education at Penn Engineering. After three years in the U.S. Peace Corps, he completed his master’s degree and was recruited into a new Penn Engineering doctoral program in energy management and policy. “Ultimately,” recalls Cassel, “this led to the founding and eventual success of my company,” a pioneer in the independent electric power industry.

After time at Bechtel Corporation, a worldwide leader in the engineering and construction industry, in 1978 Cassel launched his first entrepreneurial venture—Technecon Consulting Group, advising companies seeking energy technology investments, with Penn colleagues Peter Blair (G ’74, GEE ’76, GR ’76) and Professor Robert Edelstein. Through a series of strategic partnerships, acquisitions, and ventures over two decades, Cassel became CEO and majority shareholder of a multi-million dollar power plant enterprise called Reading Energy Holdings, Inc. In the mid-1990s, Cassel and his fellow management shareholders profitably sold their power plant assets to multi-national corporations.

Cassel’s education and professional experience tell just part of the story. He has published more than 50 papers and articles on the technical, economical, and environmental aspects of energy and waste processing technologies, and the book “Geothermal Energy: Investment Decisions and Commercial Development.” He has addressed numerous conferences and hearings, has appeared in both radio and television media, and serves as an advisor to high-tech start-up ventures.

In returning to Penn Engineering to direct the Entrepreneurship Program, Cassel seems to have come full circle. “It’s not so much a feeling of coming back as it is one of giving back,” says Cassel with trademark modesty. “It’s a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to teach at Penn—one of the world’s finest educational institutions. It’s also tremendously satisfying to feel that, in some small way, I may be contributing to the future success of the next generation of entrepreneurial engineers.”

He is giving them the best of lessons. In developing the program, Cassel consulted Penn faculty and colleagues around the country. He drew on the case-study method used in his post-graduate work at the Harvard Business School, which he completed in 1994. He culled his syllabus from hundreds of cases and personal experiences and he supplements lectures and case discussions with guest speakers who are among the biggest successes in engineering entrepreneurship.

The Entrepreneurship Program is a two-course series designed specifically for junior and senior engineering and science students. For many, Cassel knows, it is their first exposure to business education. The courses focus on knowledge that can be helpful in shaping high-tech ideas into viable products and then taking them to market in high-tech ventures.

“I tell every DMD student that they must take this class, and it is every bit as important to their education as their computer science, communication or art classes,” says Amy Calhoun, associate director of Penn Engineering’s Digital Media Design program. “Students need to be good entrepreneurs to market their skills in this new economic environment …They have to understand enough about business to do it for themselves… Nobody knows how to teach this. Tom does.”

The first course introduces concepts involved in a high-tech venture—strategy, capital, negotiation, leadership. The second course examines the necessary steps for planning a high-tech venture: Students work in small teams to develop and present a business plan for critique by a “blue-chip” panel of industry leaders. Students not only take away the ability to plan a high-tech venture, but the written and verbal skills to promote it.

On a sunny September day, Cassel’s classroom is filled to capacity. The topic is intellectual property: “You get a great idea at some point in your career,” says Cassel. “How do you protect your idea? Do you need to protect it?” The case—the story of “an engineer like us”— is about the negotiation of a licensing agreement between an employee and a major tech company. In some of the cases he uses, he knows the parties involved.

Cassel uses his vast professional network to teach and to give his students real-world experience. He arranges summer internships at high-tech companies for undergraduates. He readily offers career counseling and connects students with job opportunities. One of the students Cassel directed was Aaron M. Verstraete (EE ‘02), a program manager at Microsoft Corporation. “Getting to know Dr. Cassel is probably the only reason I am working where I am today,” says Verstraete. “A recruiter here at Microsoft asked him for recommendations for some strong students she could interview from his program, and I happened to be one of the people on that list. Once I got the job offer, he was paramount as a mentor in helping me decide where to go and why.”

Cassel also teaches graduate level courses, and serves as an instructor for independent studies and as an advisor for senior design projects.

Jennifer A. Friel (BSE ’01), a senior associate consultant at Bain & Company, Inc., in London, took the engineering entrepreneurship courses: “Dr. Cassel is the best teacher I had at Penn. Because he comes from industry…he is in touch with the ‘real’ business world and often incorporated personal examples from his own experiences into his lessons. Students view him as an expert counselor, helping each student discover entrepreneurship in the most effective way…I doubt there is a professor at Penn with better attendance records.”

Such student praise won Cassel the S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award in the spring. The award is presented annually by the undergraduate student body and the Engineering Alumni Society in recognition of outstanding service in the intellectual and professional development of Penn Engineering undergraduates. Cassel also earned a “Perfect Professor” designation in the 2001 Penn Course Review, a student-run survey of Penn faculty, and regularly receives high ratings on student course evaluation forms.

For Cassel, the pleasure is his. “The opportunity to serve on Penn’s faculty and to work with Penn’s students is rewarding beyond any of my expectations,” he says. “Often in the evening when I return to my car, I’ll look out over the campus from the upper level of my parking garage and take a moment to count my blessings for this second career and its tremendous rewards.”