At a breakfast meeting in 1962, three people met to discuss a bold new program that was being proposed for Florida Atlantic University. What they discussed was an ocean oriented specialty that would be unique and different from oceanography as offered at Florida State University, from the fisheries and oceanography program at the University of Miami, and from coastal engineering at the University of Florida. The three people at the meeting were Dr. Charles Foreman, State Board of Regents representative, Dr. Palmer Craig, proposed Dean of Science at FAU, and Mr. Gene Robinson, Assistant to the President.

      Robinson was aware that Capt. Charles R. Stephan, Director of Undersea Warfare, Research & Development in the Chief of Naval Operation Office, had reported great problems with underwater equipment designed by engineers with no marine experience. Common practice was to approve designs with no more testing than operation in freshwater lakes and in test tanks. Robinson invited Capt. Stephan to the breakfast and asked him to give the group an outline of a curriculum for a program which would train engineers for ocean work. Stephan complied by giving them a proposed curriculum but thought little more about it.

      Shortly thereafter, in 1963, the nuclear powered submarine, U.S.S. Thresher, was lost at sea during a test dive off New England. Because information about her test depth was classified, and because of great uncertainty about exactly where she went to the bottom, there was intense speculation that some of her crew might still be alive, sustained by a life support system adequate for as much as six months. She was, by any speculation, below a depth at which an effective rescue effort could be mounted. The hideous possibility of a lingering death, reported minute by minute in the world press, faced the loved ones of the crew and the people of the United States.

      Mercifully, the USS Thresher was found, months later, in 8400 feet of water, well below her crush depth and totally shattered by the implosion of her hull. Death had been instantaneous! The inability of the combined might of the military-industrial complex, augmented by the ocean academic community, to find her wreckage expeditiously, or to be able to rescue her crew, caused the United States Navy to convene the Deep Submergence Systems Review Group (DSSRG).

      Admiral Ed Stephan headed the DSSRG, and one of the members of the DSSRG was Capt. Charles R. Stephan (no relation). One of the recommendations of the DSSRG was to implement university training programs to teach engineers to work in the ocean. Robinson met Capt. Stephan in Washington and proposed that he come to Florida Atlantic University upon retirement from the Navy and start a new discipline which was to be called "Ocean Engineering." Capt. Stephan declined, saying that he did not have the academic credentials to do the job. When Robinson asked for the name of someone with such credentials who could start the new program, Capt. Stephan was stumped. He finally agreed to take the job. He was made Chairman of the Department of Ocean Engineering, and our discipline was initiated.

      Planning for the new department started in 1964. Capt. Stephan, now Professor Stephan, brought aboard an oceanographer recommended by his good friend Carl Holm, who also was promoting Ocean Engineering. Dr. Ray McAllister, who had had considerable practical experience in the ocean, became the second oceaneer. Stephan and McAllister taught a course called "Introduction to Oceanography" in 1964.

      By begging, borrowing, wheedling and coaxing, Stephan got the program started on the strength of the money he raised from 100 presentations around the area. He brought aboard Dr. William Tessin, retired as Director of the Navy Marine Engineering Lab at Annapolis, and Cdr. J. Blaine Davidson, a Navy acoustician recently retired as Director of Undersea Programs at the Office of Naval Research. Then several more professors joined us, and in 1965 a first class was enrolled, to graduate two years later, after junior and senior years in the hard core Ocean Engineering program; 35 unbelievably gutsy young men who were willing to take a chance on an unknown discipline with questionable likelihood of acceptance by industry or academia.

      About half of the first class was composed of young men who had read brief announcements in Skin Diver Magazine about the new program and discipline. We started as an upper division institution taking our students from the various junior and community colleges around the country. Their success can be seen when you look up the graduates of the Class of 1967 in the Alumni Directory. They were the first graduating class of Oceaneers, in the first institution teaching Ocean Engineering, anywhere in the world!

      The Perry Submarine Company, now Perry Technologies, assisted greatly by giving us the "Hydrolab," an underwater habitat which we installed off Palm Beach. While only a small handful of students ever used it, primarily learning how to install and recover an underwater habitat, it brought us enormous publicity. We grew rapidly and before too long had as many as 200 undergraduates enrolled. We moved out of a floor in the Library Building into six or seven locations on campus, with offices and classrooms concentrated in the General Classroom South (GCS), "Where Tomorrow Begins!"

      Our first boat was a 19-foot CeeBee loaned or leased from Florida Ocean Science Institute. Shortly thereafter, Fred Minors, a local industrialist, gave us his 41-foot Hatteras, which we promptly renamed "Oceaneer" It was our research vessel, along with a series of 20 footers which were given to us, or purchased, until Dr. Jeffrey Tennant negotiated purchase of the trawler, "Oceaneer IV."

      In 1968 the National Sea Grant Office funded a program in Cooperative Education for the Department, and the campus-wide program grew from that beginning. We still place a couple of "co-ops" every semester. The grant provided faculty and funding for equipment and expenses and put the new Department on a solid financial footing. By the grace of God and a number of outstanding chairmen, we have stayed that way.

      At one point in our history we asked for a College of Engineering to be established and were told there was no chance. We were strongly advised to unite with the College of Science or we might not survive. The faculty voted to hold out, and a few months later we had a College of Engineering, and split off the beginnings of the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Departments.

      In 1973 we met the requirements of the Engineering Council for Professional Development (ECPD) and were accredited. Sometime thereafter the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) took over these duties and we have been continuously accredited since 1973. The other departments in the College of Engineering also have enjoyed continuous accreditation since this initial eligibility.

      At another bleak point in our funding picture, we were designated a Program of Distinction by the State University System, which carried with it extra funds and a faculty position in perpetuity. Such recognition (we were one of five Programs of Distinction in the State), and the ever increasing acceptance by industry and government of our graduates have, in a phrase borrowed from Willard Bascom, "kept the rest wallowing in our wake."

      Throughout our history, attempts have been made to merge us with other departments and colleges, or with other state schools; to abolish us; and to have us dramatically change our curriculum. Resisting all such efforts from a position of strength, we have come to our present widely recognized preeminence in undergraduate ocean engineering.

      The University began a selective freshmen program in 1984, and we got rather more than our share of them. In the fall of 1983 we began our Ph.D. offering and graduated our first Doctorate of Ocean Engineering in 1987. A second and third doctoral candidate successfully completed the program in 1988. Since then we have had a large number of additional Ph.D. graduates and a large number studying for the degree at present.

      In 1983 we finally got a new engineering building, which was already too small the day we moved in, but was an enormous improvement over the scattered broom closets we started in. In spite of Electrical and Computer Engineering moving into the Science/Engineering building built in 1994, we have expanded into every available space in the "old" Engineering Building and will soon move into SeaFair complex in Dania, Florida, about 40 minutes south of the Main Campus. This site, FAU's seventh campus, will have additional office, classroom lab shop facilities, a marina and ocean access. Much of our research, including the AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) program, will occupy SeaFair, renamed SeaTech, as soon as the remodeling has been completed.

      Our student body is quite international. We have recently had undergraduates and graduate students from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Greece, India, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Scotland, Taiwan, Trinidad, Venezuela, etc. Very often they come to us because they have heard of us from industrial and military figures who know of the reputation our graduates have earned for us.

      The Department is presently doing about four million dollars in sponsored research under a number of umbrellas: the regular department research, the Center for Marine Materials, the Center for Acoustics and Vibrations, the AUV program, and the Engineering and Industrial Experiment Station. Sponsors include the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the U.S. NAVSEASYSCOM, Perry Technologies, the National Science Foundation, the Florida Department of Transportation, the Florida High Technology and Industry Council, the Florida Sea Grant Program, NASA, the American Petroleum Institute/Joint Industry Project, Shell Oil Co., etc.

      Much of our research is in one of five areas of specialization: underwater acoustics, marine materials and corrosion, ocean structures, hydrodynamics, and the newest addition to our OE options, marine vehicles. We expect stay in the forefront of research on submersible and autonomous vehicles.

      In 1989, the H.A. Perry Foundation, Inc., and our Department, held the first International Submarine Race in the waters off Palm Beach, Florida. It was for a human powered, two-person wet sub, with no backup power systems allowed. This race was followed by two more in 1991 and 1993, both won, very handily, by the "F.A. U-boat", which soundly trounced our competitors in the speed category, which is, after all, what a RACE is all about!

      In 1994, the FA U-boat competed in the West Coast Submarine Invitational meet in the Offshore Model Basin in Escondido, California. There, we achieved a speed .49 knots faster than the new "fastest" boat. We made national television with that effort, entirely mounted entirely by our students.

      In closing, the O.E. program continues to prosper and grow. Thanks to the accomplishments of the alumni and dedicated faculty, the reputation of this program is very well established. Every day we face new challenges centered on bringing the strengths of new technologies into the discipline while keeping the fundamentals of ocean engineering intact. The Department is looking forward to this future and the prospects of working with you and the new graduating classes of ocean engineers, to stay in front of the pack and continue to deserve our reputation as the "Best Damn Ocean Engineering Program in the World!"