Best of Case

These awards represent the highest honors bestowed by the Case Alumni Association, the oldest independent alumni association of engineering and applied science graduates in America.

At Homecoming and Reunion Weekend October 10-13, the association will honor six distinguished alumni and one beloved professor. These are people who have shaped the campus and the world and strengthened our alumni community.

Like most students in the 1960s, F. Grant Saviers ’66, MS ’68, arrived at college never having seen a computer. Halfway through his freshman year, he discovered the computing center and the Burroughs 220, a room-sized machine with tape drives and punch cards and mystery. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“Case had a philosophy that was different from other universities at the time,” Saviers recalled. “The students could touch the computer. We were free to see what we could do.”

He learned computer engineering before there was such a degree, then helped pioneer the industry as a top executive at Digital Equipment Corporation. Today, he helps other Case students find their path to success as a supporter of scholarships, experiential learning, and as an advisor to the Case School of Engineering.

Saviers, a founder and trustee of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, will come home in October to receive the Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed annually by the Case Alumni Association.

Born in Baltimore, Saviers became interested in electronics via ham radio as a boy. It was the start of a lifelong pursuit. He recalls he and his classmates in the Case radio club crawling through the catacombs of Case Main to thread coaxial cable from their basement clubhouse to a rooftop antenna.

Meanwhile, his professors encouraged professional work. He designed and installed modifications to the Univac 1107, pledged Zeta Psi, and became a young innovator. For his master’s thesis, he built a double speed acoustic modem, with an on-the-fly error correcting system for connecting a Teletype terminal to a computer.

IBM offered him a job upon graduation but he selected the smaller, edgier DEC — “these MIT guys in an old woolen mill near Boston,” as he describes it. “I said, DEC is the closest thing I've ever seen to Case. A lot of bright people, a freewheeling environment.”

He specialized in data storage at a company that became second to IBM in computer systems, rising to become vice president of PC Systems and Peripherals.

After 24 years at DEC, he left in 1992 to run Adaptec, a maker of computer I/O interfaces, where he soon became CEO and chairman.

Saviers, who lives in Seattle, has been retired since August 1998 but his days remain full with discovery and technology. He’s a member of the ARLISS project, in which high power rocketry enthusiasts in northern California build and test miniature satellites. And he remains active in amateur radio (KZ1W), including “DX-peditions” to activate stations in remote parts of the world.

Saviers, who has been married to his wife, Dorrit, for more than 40 years, credits Case for giving him the tools and the curiosity for a fulfilling life.

“It certainly launched me in a great direction,” he said. “Looking back, I didn’t want to be lost in a great big school like Purdue or the University of Michigan. Case was the right size. It had great professors who gave students an enormous amount of freedom. I made great friends.”

He gives back to the Case School of Engineering as a member of advisory boards, including the Silicon Valley Taskforce. He’s a longstanding member of the Case Dean’s Society. The F. Grant Saviers ’66 Scholarship Fund supports undergraduates in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

“I want to see that students have the same opportunities I had,” Saviers said. “And that leads me to want to continue to support the university.”

Rich in memories, Paul Stephan ’64 often turns reflective when he recalls one of his thousands of former students, like the young man from a humble home who had lost his father. Stephan helped him to find a jacket and tie for a job interview, as well as slacks and loafers and — most of all — confidence.

“The only thing of his own that he wore that day was his underwear,” he recalled, his eyes misting. “But he got the job.”

Stephan, the quarterback for the Rough Riders in the early 1960s, was forever a teammate to the students he taught, the players he captained, the alumni he engaged as a development officer for the Case Alumni Association. At Homecoming 2019, he will receive the Samuel Givelber ’23 Award, which honors an alumnus who exemplifies fellowship and human kindness in the Case tradition.

It may become a favorite trophy in a crowded case.

Stephan grew up farming and playing sports in the countryside northeast of Cincinnati and followed an older brother to Case.

“It was tough academically,” he said. “I went to a small high school. I was valedictorian. So was my brother. My mother and father were valedictorians of their high school. So we were expected to do well academically. But Case was challenging.”

He majored in mathematics, partly to avoid engineering labs, pledged Zeta Psi and became president of the Case Interfraternity Council. He entered his first football game as a sophomore when the starting quarterback went down injured. His first pass on his first play went for a touchdown. More satisfying were the two wins over Western Reserve before he graduated.

Stephan went on to earn his master’s in operations research at the University of Pennsylvania. He managed computing projects for industry and for hospitals as the field of information systems emerged.

He had been teaching part-time at Case when, in 1985, Dean Don Schuele made it full-time. Stephan was asked to teach a mandatory freshman class in computer programming, some 600 students per year. By the time he stepped away from full-time teaching in 1998, he had taught and counseled more than 7,000 students.

That was his springboard to the Case Alumni Association, where he reconnected with former students and asked them to help the next generation.

“I knew from my teaching days the quality of the work these young people were doing and how a scholarship could lend a badly needed boost," he said. “So I know the value of the alumni association and alumni giving.”

He has the memories to remind him.

In his first job, Joshua Martin III ’66 shined shoes in his father’s barber shop in Columbia, South Carolina. Today, he’s a director of public corporations.

Between that humble beginning and stellar finish, Martin worked as a research scientist, a patent attorney, a judge and the CEO of a phone company. And it all started with a degree in physics from Case Institute of Technology.

“Oh, science was my first love,” says Martin, winner of a 2019 Meritorious Service Award, which recognizes his contributions to society and to his alma mater. “After the Russians launched Sputnik, I couldn’t get enough of science.”

In the 11th grade, he was a finalist in the National Science Fair. He chose to attend Case Institute of Technology for its strong science and technical reputation. He majored in physics, pledged Alpha Phi Alpha and played clarinet in the concert band.

“I grew tremendously during my time there,” he said. “I can’t say enough about the wonderful growth I enjoyed during my time in Cleveland.”

His immersion into the laws of physics brought an epiphany, however. “I realized I didn’t have ‘Nobel juice,’” he said.

He began his career at DuPont as a physicist but soon earned a law degree and became a patent attorney. That led to a seat on the Delaware Public Service Commission and, eventually, eight years as a state Superior Court Judge.

After he left the bench, Martin joined Bell Atlantic Delaware as general counsel and rose to become president and CEO of the company now called Verizon.

In 2005, he became a partner in the Wilmington, Delaware, law firm of Potter Anderson & Corroon. He specializes in arbitration and mediation of cases with technical issues, which tap his scientific background.

He was a member of Case Western Reserve’s board of trustees from 1999 to 2009 and has also served on the College of Arts and Sciences Visiting Committee.

That degree in physics keeps on giving, Martin says, and he’s proud to support his alma mater.

To talk physics with Professor Don Schuele, PhD ’63, is to talk about wind, sports, the universe and how it all works.

What pitch can a batter hit farther, a fastball or a curveball? If you know the laws of physics, Schuele says, you understand why it’s a curveball.

How do you measure the electrical properties of layered polymers? That’s what he’s working on now, having never stopped questioning.

At a university renowned for its physicists, Schuele stands tall. He served Case Institute of Technology — and later Case Western Reserve University — as teacher, researcher, administrator and dean. Though he retired several years ago as the Albert Michelson Professor of

Physics, Schuele still maintains a lab on campus, where he guides young scientists toward new discoveries.

For faithful and brilliant service to Case, Schuele will receive a Meritorious Service Award at Homecoming 2019.

“It’s an honor,” said Schuele, a member of the Case family for 60 years. “In my job as an administrator, the alumni association was extremely helpful.”

Schuele came to CIT from the faculty of John Carroll University in 1959 to earn his doctorate in physics and never left. Over the next 40 years, he served the school in an array of leadership roles, including department chair and two tours as dean.

But he looks back most fondly on his years as a classroom professor.

“Students at Case were always very good,” Schuele said. “To interact with these students was fun.”

He helped to make it so. To explain the genius of the Michelson-Morley Experiment, Schuele built a life-sized model that stands in the lobby of Schmitt Auditorium.

An avid sports fan, he uses examples from the sporting world to teach and generate interest in physics.

“Theoretically, you can hit a curveball farther because of the spin, the fluid dynamics. A lot of people don’t know that,” he said.

In the 1980s, he helped to bring science to U.S. Olympic teams as a leading member of the Sports Equipment Technology Committee of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Meanwhile, he and his wife Clare raised six children. Schuele enjoys the company of 13 grandchildren and two great grandchildren — as well as the students who still look to him for guidance.

At his campus lab he has two research projects underway, exploring physical mysteries that still challenge and fascinate him.

“Nature’s a lot of fun,” he said. “If you do an experiment, and it doesn’t work out, you have to stand back and ask, ‘What is nature trying to tell me?”

Professor Adel “Tony” Saada, PhD, has been teaching for nearly 60 years, most of that time on Case Quad, yet a surge of youthful energy is never more than a thought away.

Mention the geotechnical labs on the second floor of the Bingham Building, one flight above his office, and you might send him leaping from his seat and marching briskly toward the stairs on rebuilt legs.

“Let me show you!” he declared on a recent morning, eager to describe the labs’ capabilities.

Saada designed and championed the twin labs, imbuing them with his energy and several of his own inventions. He has done much the same with the Department of Civil Engineering, which he chaired for 20 years, and where generations of students have experienced his zeal.

At Homecoming 2019, the nearlegendary professor will receive a Meritorious Service Award in recognition of his expertise, his infectious spirit, and his steadfast service to the Case School of Engineering.

Saada not only started the first geotechnical engineering and research lab at Case, he also established the Saada Family Fellowships, which help to attract top students pursuing doctorates in Civil Engineering.

A fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Saada has been inducted into the Academy of Geoprofessionals with the status of Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineering.

The multi-lingual Saada studied in France — at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris and at the Institute of Hydraulics of the University of Grenoble — before immigrating to America to earn his PhD at Princeton. Harry Nara and Robert Scanlan recruited him to the Case Institute of Technology in 1962 to start a discipline in geotechnical engineering.

He taught for decades, chaired the department from 1978 to 1998, and was instrumental in securing the Neff Chair and in starting the environmental engineering discipline. He also wrote a textbook, Elasticity, Theory and Applications.

With 30 years of uninterrupted support from the National Science Foundation, Saada has published widely in national and international journals.

No doubt his influence will long endure. Playfully acknowledging the competition for building space among engineering departments, Saada vows to watch over his labs long after he’s gone.

More than one dean has seen the sign he keeps handy in his office and his labs, the one lettered PGTS: “Protected by the Ghost of Tony Saada.”

“I’m going to be right over in Lake View Cemetery,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t think I’m not watching.”

When he launched his first startup a decade ago, Matt Crowley ’08 waited six months to sign his first client. His latest company attracted its first customer in six days — and his phone has not stopped ringing and pinging since.

Cyprus Lake offers a timely and

critical service — cybersecurity for airports and airlines — as it taps Crowley’s uncommon expertise in airline industry computer systems.

Busy as he is with a new company — and a newborn — he devotes time to the Case Alumni Association as a mentor, advisor and member of the board of directors. He will be honored at Homecoming 2019 with the Young Alumni Leadership Award.

“I’m surprised and honored,” said Crowley, who earned a degree in computer engineering in 2008 from the Case School of Engineering. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the university and without the alumni association.”

A Junior Senior Scholarship helped him attain his degree, he said, and his first internship and one of his first jobs came through the alumni network.

Crowley, a native of Cleveland, started his career as a software engineer, first at Microsoft developing Internet Explorer, then as co-founder of a software development business in Washington, D.C. Then he joined an airline industry trying to adapt to a digital world.

As Chief Information Officer for Cleveland Hopkins Airport from 2014 to 2017, he was named a CIO of the Year finalist by Crain’s Cleveland Business. Crowley moved on to Philadelphia’s airport, where he served as CIO until this year. In May, he co-founded his latest startup.

Cyprus Lake advises airports on how to protect their information systems from ransomware attacks, something that Cleveland Hopkins experienced in April. More worrisome than digital extortion, Crowley said, are hackers or terrorists who might succeed in shutting down flight control systems, endangering lives.

“Everyone needs these services right now,” he said. “It’s been a very fulfilling experience.”

Crowley and his wife, Rachel, are planning to move back to Cleveland from New Jersey with their firstborn, Oren. That will make it easier for him to be involved with his alma mater.

“I love being on the board,” Crowley said. “I am honored to be able to help the next generation of students, those coming into the university and those entering the workforce.”

Marv Schwartz ’68, PhD ’73, stepped down as president of the Case Alumni Association in July but not before building a nearly lifelong legacy of service. At Homecoming 2019, Schwartz will be recognized for supporting his alma mater as a teacher, advisor, board member and alumni leader.

The pleasure was all his.

“Case taught me all I knew about computers and programming,” Schwartz said. “Based on that, I had a really successful career. It gave me the tools that I use every day to do what I want to do.”

Many benefited from those skills. Schwartz is a technology entrepreneur with a generous spirit. He has shared his expertise as a software designer and programmer with the Youngstown Business Incubator, with Cleveland school children and with CWRU, where he has been an adjunct professor for more than 30 years.

He helped to shape the culture of discovery in Case’s computer science program. In the late 1960s, Schwartz became a programmer for the campusbased Chi Corporation — “Project X” — which broke new ground as the first time-sharing computer company in Northeast Ohio.

He later launched Noteworthy Medical Systems, an electronic medical records company. In 2014, he became Chief Scientist at One Community, a Cleveland-based high-speed Internet provider to nonprofits that has evolved into Everstream and DigitalC.

The one constant in his career has been Case.

Disdainful of dissecting frogs, he got off the pre-med track at Washington & Jefferson College and transferred to Case to study mathematics, a science he loves for its discipline.

“I’ve worked for Case since I graduated,” he observed, speaking in the lobby of Yost Hall, home of the math department then and now.

As an adjunct, he taught math and computer science in the spirit of favorite professors, like Paul Guenther, with whom he shared many lunches. A dozen years ago, Schwartz joined the board of the Case Alumni Association.

“It’s a group of like-minded individuals who want to advance Case,” he said. “It’s a great organization and has good people and they’re moving the organization ahead.”

His service is not over. As immediate past president, Schwartz will join the board’s executive committee. But he feels confident passing the torch to the new president, Professor Sunniva Collins, MS ’91, PhD ’95.

He has no doubt she can count upon the same support he received from alumni who can never forget their time at Case.

“It’s just a special place,” he said.

The awards ceremony takes place during the Innovation ShowCASE Friday night, October 11, at Sears think[box]. Register at https://www.casealum.org/ homecoming2019

You’ve worked hard, saved diligently and are ready to enjoy your retirement years. Maybe you’re also looking for a way to give back to the organizations and causes that have been important to you. Consider making a gift to the Case Alumni Foundation from your Individual Retirement Account (IRA).

If you’re 70½ or older, you can use the IRA charitable rollover to make a tax-free gift to the Case Alumni Foundation. This law allows you to transfer any amount up to $100,000 directly to a qualified charitable organization, like the Case Alumni Foundation, without paying income tax on the distribution.

A lot of good things can happen when you use the IRA charitable rollover to make a gift to the Case Alumni Foundation. For example: • Your gift can be put to use today, allowing you to see the difference you’re making immediately, or you can invest into the endowment in order to support campus activities for years to come. • Your gift can provide meaningful support for scholarships, faculty, laboratories, research or any area of your choosing. • You pay no income taxes on the gift. The transfer doesn’t generate taxable income or a tax deduction, so you benefit even if you do not itemize your tax deductions. • If you have not yet taken your required minimum distribution for the year, your IRA charitable rollover gift can satisfy all or part of that requirement. However, gifts can be made at any time.

Your IRA gift can be used to create a named endowment that will support the Case experience for generations to come. Named endowed funds support scholarships, fellowships, laboratories, equipment and extracurricular activities that expand knowledge and foster innovative thinking. For more information contact Steve Zinram, at steve.zinram@ casealum.org; 216.368.8841.

If you don’t yet meet the age requirement, you can still support our mission with your IRA. Simply name the Case Alumni Foundation as a beneficiary of your account, and we’ll receive the funds after your lifetime.

Find more information about supporting the Case Alumni Foundation at casealum.planmylegacy.org or contact Steve Zinram, Executive Director of the Case Alumni Association at steve.zinram@casealum.org; 216.368.8841.

Disclosure Statement: The information in this article is not intended as legal or tax advice. For such advice, please consult an attorney or tax advisor. Figures cited in examples are for illustrative purposes only. References to tax rates include federal taxes only and are subject to change. State law may further impact your individual results.