Forging engineers

Dr. Augie Freda could have a had a career in metallurgy. Instead, he built programs that cast engineers, computer and petroleum technicians.

BY KIMBERLY WEINBERG

You can still draw a line from Dr. August Freda’s 32 years on campus to today, specifically to the construction of the George B. Duke Engineering and Information Technologies Building and the programs it will house.

Freda, known to his colleagues as “Augie” and his students as “Doc Freda,” laid the foundation for technological innovation at Pitt-Bradford while contributing to the core of what has always been at the heart of a Pitt-Bradford graduation, a deep bond between students and faculty.

Students were always welcome at the Freda home, where he and his wife, Vicky, often hosted students for dinner. Alumni recall meeting friends and even spouses at these events.

Dr. August “Augie” Freda at the controls of the IBM 1130 the university purchased with McKean County in 1969. Freda was an early promoter of computing for educational, business and government purposes.

W. FORRES STEWART COLLECTION

“Doc and Vicky made it a real family atmosphere,” said Dr. Brandon Chavel ’95-’97. “He always invited us to his house and invited you to come in and sit down and have a chat. You learned about him and Vicky. He learned about you. It felt good that a professor took interest in you who did not have to.”

Doc and Vicky became like parents for some students.

“Doc was great. He really did treat all of us like we were an extension of his family, and we were like his kids,” said Sandra Vars Gorman ’93-’95. He and Vicky even took care of her when she became deliriously ill during her first year. “I showed up at a calc test in slippers and pajamas and lost consciousness,” she said. Her roommate, not knowing what to do, called Freda, who coordinated care and communicated with her other professors. Vicky stayed with her in the hospital, then Doc arranged for her to get home to Florida. Gorman had been planning to get a ride home for spring break with friends.

“Doc got them out of their classes so they could take me home early,” she said.

Freda, left, at the ground breaking of Fisher Hall

In the classroom, it was his patience that stood out to alumni.

John Kearney ’73-’75 said, “I didn’t feel like I was going to be left behind. Some professors have a text that they’re teaching from, and they just want to blast through it. He didn’t have a weed-out approach. He wanted all of us to make it.”

All engineering students were considered members of the engineering club, took part in field trips, had guest speakers and went on engineering picnics to Kinzua Bridge and Kinzua Dam, all of which built a level of camaraderie among engineering cohorts.

“He made it comfortable,” Chavel said. “He encouraged us to work together as students. That’s what we do in the industry. Unknowingly, we learned to operate as a team.”

Freda in the 1990s. His slouchy sweaters became something of a signature item.

While his interactions with and fondness for students were legendary, Freda also played a crucial role in the university’s development.

A gifted metallurgist, he came to Pitt in 1957 after earning his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Notre Dame University. After 10 years of teaching in Pittsburgh, he made the leap to the Bradford campus and its fledgling 2-year engineering program, which gave students foundational courses and helped them decide what kind of engineering they wanted to make their specialty.

As the go-to technical-minded professor on the faculty of early Pitt-Bradford, he became interested in early computers and became the director of not only engineering but also a fledgling computer science program.

In 1969, the campus obtained an IBM 1130 in partnership with McKean County, which shared time on the machine with the campus. Freda organized one-day computer management seminars for local government officials, business executives and school administrators. He starteda 2-year certificate for electronic data processing that became the basis of all future computer programming options.

“The certificate marked the first time that the Bradford campus had expanded the curriculum in response to local priorities rather than to a mandate from Pittsburgh,” author Sherie Mershon wrote in “A History of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.”

When the petroleum industry requested a program in petroleum engineering technology, Freda took that on as well and directed that program.

Before more faculty were hired, he managed these programs himself and taught classes in early computer programming languages and surveying for petroleum technology, not to mention astronomy, all while teaching, redesigning and stabilizing the engineering program.

Outside of teaching, he conducted research at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories and consulted for companies that included U.S. Steel, Westinghouse Electric Co., Dresser Manufacturing Co. and W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co., where he created solutions to keep sharp knife edges still in use today.