Two cornerstones of Lipscomb’s engineering college retire this year

Greg Nordstrom and Fort Gwinn leave generations of top-notch engineers in their wake.

Janel Shoun-Smith | 01/15/2023

The 2022-2023 school year has brought the retirement of two long-time engineering professors beloved by students and faculty alike: Greg Nordstrom and Fort Gwinn.

Nordstrom, lovingly called Count Dooku by summer robotics campers due to his resemblance to the Jedi Master who fell to the dark side in the Star Wars films, had been at Lipscomb since 2011 and served as chair of the electrical and computer engineering department since 2019. He retired in December 2022.

Gwinn, who had a hand in founding numerous student mechanical engineering ventures from the annual Mini Baja project to build and race an ATV to most recently the installation of the college’s wind tunnel, has been at Lipscomb since 1999, before the college even existed, and will retire this May.

Gwinn, in fact, is credited among the five professors who originally dreamed up the idea of establishing the engineering college itself. Of the five, three were physics professors; so Gwinn and fellow faculty member George O’Conner, were the only engineers on faculty, a requirement for accreditation. His work was instrumental in establishing the mechanical engineering major at Lipscomb.

“As a founder, Fort had great influence on the culture of the program which was academically rigorous and student centered with strong hands-on student content,” said now-retired college Dean Justin Myrick.

The engineering college was first established as the Raymond B. Jones School of Engineering in 2002, when Gwinn became the chair of the engineering mechanics department. In 2007 Gwinn became chair of the mechanical engineering department and later moved up to associate dean after engineering became a college in 2009.
 

“I was blessed to know both Fort Gwinn and Greg Nordstrom before they came to Lipscomb. Their presence here and the work they did in laying strong foundations for our program have blessed countless students—and have directly impacted my life,” said current college Dean David Elrod. 

These two retirees have been part of each others’ lives for decades as they both worked in the aerospace industry in Tullahoma, Tennessee, during their early careers, and their families have known each other since the 1980s. Nordstrom was an engineering project manager at Arnold Engineering Development Center and Fort was a senior design engineer at Jacobs/Sverdrup Technology.

After the pair of engineers found themselves both in Nashville in the late 1990s–Gwinn as a professor at Lipscomb and Nordstrom as a Ph.D. student and operation manager at the Vanderbilt Institute for Software Integrated Systems–Gwinn began actively encouraging Nordstrom to join the Lipscomb community.

He did move to Lipscomb in 2011, serving as interim dean, professor and chair of the electrical and computer engineering department through the years, and generations of engineering students at the college level and at the K-12 level are glad that he did. 

In addition to his work in the classroom, Nordstrom served as a faculty consultant for the Lipscomb IEEE Student Chapter, worked with the Lipscomb University accreditation team and served as president of the Faculty Senate.

His work with K-12 students will last long in the memory of many a future engineer. As the founding director of Lipscomb’s highly successful BisonBot Robotics Camp, he guided hundreds of students from kindergartners to high school seniors in robotics projects each summer. He also worked with the Music City BEST Robotics competition held by the college each year and was a member of the Middle Tennessee STEM Innovation Hub council.

Throughout his years at Lipscomb, Gwinn has used his contacts made through several fellowships with NASA and contracts with Jacobs/Sverdrup to benefit Lipscomb’s engineering students, including involving students in a project for the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. He has also served as a valuable mentor for various senior design projects such as the Lipscomb Motorsports team, the Aero Design Challenge, the installation of the college’s wind tunnel, a revolving stage for the theatre department and the exoskeleton team.

He was also the principal investigator carrying out the five-year, National Science Foundation-funded S-STEM grant program for graduates of community colleges interested in engineering degrees.

“Dr. Fort Gwinn is a treasure,” said Myrick. “He is the professor that everyone would want to have–considerate, generous with his time, and passionate about teaching… the whole faculty had a strong student interest and a major contributor was the leadership that Fort gave.”

While the campus may not feel the same after these two engineers move on to building different dreams in retirement, graduates will always remember their influence, including Nordstrom’s traditional message to each graduating class of engineers, from Esther 4: 14: “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Nordstrom will come back to campus this May to deliver this message to the 2023 graduating class.

“They each brought years of experience, wisdom and insight to our program,” said Elrod. Their faith has been evident every day in their care for our students and in their walk of faith. Finally, they each brought an unmistakable measure of joy to our work—which we'll work to sustain as we remember their legacy.”