New Dean at Cal State Forges Ahead in High Tech

When John C. Bilello was 13, he entered Brooklyn Technical High School, which emphasizes science and mathematics. It changed his life.

Today, Bilello is the first dean of Cal State Fullerton’s new School of Engineering and Computer Science.

“Yes, there’s a lesson in my high school experience,” he said in an interview this week. “If we’re to have an adequate pool of young men and young women who can qualify for engineering, they’ve got to have the training in high school.”

Bilello became the first engineering dean at Cal State Fullerton in June when the engineering and computer curricula were consolidated into a “school” with its own dean.

The new Fullerton school, he said, intends to produce the engineers who can help the United States move ahead of Japan and other technologically advanced nations.

But technology starts with education, he said, and the United States is falling badly behind.

“I think there’s a very big problem, not only in California, but in America. We don’t encourage them enough. We don’t spend enough money on our high school education in science areas.

“So by the time they get to a university, these kids haven’t had the basic physics and enough mathematics. They are unqualified for an engineering or science education.”

In California, he said, “I would guess that 80% or more of the students haven’t taken enough science or mathematics in high school. . . . A lot of talented kids are turned off at too early an age.”

The United States, he contended, also is failing to produce and keep enough science and math teachers. That, he said, “is going to take money. . . . The pay for them in college is not as high as it should be, and it’s miserable what they’re paid at the high school level.”

Bilello, 48, had been a project director at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state and dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook before he came to Cal State Fullerton.

Bilello noted that the School of Engineering and Computer Science, which has 3,029 students this year, is one of the most popular on the Fullerton campus. Admissions usually have to be cut off early each semester, and “we have a waiting list,” he added.

The need for engineers is escalating, and education must meet that need, he said.

“With much less population than the United States, Japan produces about twice the number of engineers,” he said. “You see, the key to Japan’s technological success has been to provide excellent education. Japan knew that if it got smart people into its engineering programs, that technological inventions and discoveries would follow. That is exactly what happened.

“So, if I were asked by a legislative committee what I’d recommend, I’d say the first thing we’d have to do is develop plans to get more kids in the 13- to 17-year-old bracket in the science and technology careers.”

Equipment Soon Outmoded

Another need, he said, is to provide equipment and facilities for the students.

“Fifty years ago, you could develop a school of engineering and put in basic equipment, and it’d be good for the next 30 years,” he said. “Today, technology is changing so rapidly that every five years or so new equipment is needed.”

Bilello, a native of Brooklyn, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from New York University. “The first time I ever discovered there was life beyond the Hudson River was when I went to the University of Illinois to get my Ph.D,” Bilello said, grinning.

A robust, gregarious man, Bilello likes to joke. “The name Bilello, in Italian, means ‘a little bit cute,’ ” he said, guffawing at the definition.

But while Bilello will joke about himself, he is sensitive about stereotypes of engineers. “Engineers are the people who make society work,” he declared.

“And you know what? We’re almost invisible. When do you see engineers depicted in the movies or on TV, unless it’s in a bad situation, such as ‘The China Syndrome’? Otherwise, you never see them. I was sick at home and started watching soap operas on TV. There were all kinds of doctors and lawyers on those soap operas, but never an engineer. . . .”

Some day, he said, “there should be an engineer as a hero on TV.”