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= John J. McKetta Jr. = From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John J. McKetta Jr. is an American chemical engineer, a professor emeritus and the namesake of the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He turned 100 years old on October 17, 2015. His 100th birthday was feted at a huge tailgate by the University of Texas as a joint celebration of both John McKetta and the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering reaching 100-years-old the same year.

Childhood
McKetta was born October 17, 1915 in Wyano, Pennsylvania, a small coal-mining town with a population of 225. All of the town's residents then were immigrants brought to the U.S. from Europe to mine coal. His parents were both Ukrainian and had no education at any level. Because his parents and many others in Wyano continued to speak their native languages after they came to America, McKetta didn’t learn English until he started school.

Coal Mines
After high school graduation, he worked in the coal mines for several years alongside his older brother and father. McKetta said that he had always wanted to be a coal miner until his first day of coal mining. He spent the next two years digging coal with a pick and shovel for 25 cents per ton. The work was hazardous and numerous roof cave-ins resulting in fatalities occurred during his time in the mines.

In 1935, his brother gave him a book titled "Coal Carbonization" and he learned about engineers who make chemicals from coal. After reading it, McKetta resolved to study chemical engineering and devote his professional life to finding ways to generate energy most efficiently. This idea became his great motivator.

Education and Career
Within a week of deciding to study chemical engineering, he went to Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon, to talk to the head of the chemical engineering department to learn more about the profession. He began applying to colleges—out of the 54 where he applied, only one (Tri-State College, now Trine University) accepted him. He says he took his dirty mining cap with him to school so he would always be reminded how lucky he was to be getting an education.

McKetta started his academic career at Tri-State in 1935. After receiving his undergraduate degree, he came to Michigan to work at Michigan Alkali in Wyandotte, now part of BASF. While working there, he heard that University of Michigan chemical engineering faculty were making chemicals from gas and petroleum and were consulting with a company named "Dow" and that Dow was building a "chemicals from gas" plant in Freeport, Texas.

He drove to Ann Arbor in November 1941 to meet the faculty members; the chairman of department, “Great God” Brown (a nickname many students called G.G. Brown), and the “great” Donald L. Katz, who remained McKetta’s senior professor and dearest friend until his death in 1989. They suggested that he pursue a graduate degree at Michigan, so he agreed to enroll in the program for the winter term in 1942.

While at Michigan, he and his doctoral advisor, Katz, developed a set of tables relating to underground temperature and pressure in gas and oil wells that reveal the composition of the surrounding terrain, which are still in widespread use. Of all the many awards and honors McKetta has received in his life, none was as thrilling as being awarded the Donald L. Katz Award from the Gas Processing Association many years later. This award is in the McKetta Library in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas, right under Katz’ photo, which was inscribed by Katz, “to the best graduate student any faculty member could ever be so lucky to have, Johnny McKetta, with my deepest personal and professional wishes."

51 of the colleges he applied to that rejected him have since asked him to be their president.

Family
During his time at Michigan, he met Helen "Pinky" Elisabeth Smith of Kalamazoo, his wife of 69 years until she died in 2011. McKetta gave her the nickname "Pinky" after she wore a pink blouse on their second date. Helen had received her BA in English from Western Michigan University, then Western State Normal School, and was working as the secretary to the dean of men at the University of Michigan.

They married on McKetta's birthday on October 17, 1943, after a six-month courtship. Together they had four children: Charles McKetta, John J. “Mike” McKetta III, Randy McKetta, and Mary Anne McKetta.

His life is the subject of a biography being currently written by his granddaughter, author and writing professor Elisabeth Sharp McKetta.

The University of Texas
After he finished his doctoral degree, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas’ (UT) Chemical Engineering Department in 1946, where he would stay for the remainder of his career, serving also as vice chancellor of the UT System and dean of the College of Engineering.

His school spirit and loyalty to the University of Texas was legendary. He drove orange cars (occasionally with white horns sticking out on either side of the roof), he regularly wore burnt orange clothing (once he flashed his orange underwear to an audience before delivering a lecture at Texas A&M), and twice each year, he and his wife Helen invited all of his chemical engineering students out to a full day picnic at his lakeside home (which included an orange felt pool table, an orange iron bridge across the channel, and an orange seat on one of the toilets).

He is best known for his role as a beloved and in many ways unconventional professor. One of his classroom habits for his entire professional life has been to call his former students every year on their birthday.

Giving Back
When he retired from The University of Texas in 1990 after teaching for 44 years and serving 7 years as dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering, McKetta added up all of his paychecks from the university and pledged them as a gift to the Department of Chemical Engineering. He challenged the alumni to match the gift, raising a total of ____.

When the chemical engineering community celebrated McKetta's 95th birthday in 2010, the department announced the start of the Challenge for McKetta- a $25 million fundraising campaign to formally name the department after Professor McKetta. Summer of 2012, the challenge passed the $10 million mark and, as suggested by the UT Board of Regents, celebrated this milestone with a formal dedication ceremony of the John J. McKetta Jr. Department of Chemical Engineering in November 2012, just two weeks after Prof. McKetta turned 97 years old.

This was not the first chemical engineering department named after him though. Fifteen years earlier, John McKetta’s undergraduate alma mater, Trine University, named their Chemical Engineering and Bioprocess Department after him as well.

Rankings
The McKetta Chemical Engineering Department is now ranked 4 in the nation (XX – world?)

John J. McKetta Undergraduate Scholarship
The John J. McKetta Undergraduate Scholarship is awarded to a chemical engineering undergraduate student planning a career in the chemical engineering process industries (CPI). The scholarship recipient receives a certificate and $5,000, presented during the Student Awards Ceremony at the Annual AIChE Student Conference. The scholarship has had seven recipients since its inception in 2009.

Research
He is widely recognized as an international authority on the thermodynamic properties of hydrocarbons. His notable achievements in the field of petrochemicals include serving as energy advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush; publishing over 400 papers and over 90 books (including his 68-volume "Encyclopedia of Chemical Processing and Design"); helping found the National Council for Environmental Balance; and devising alongside his UT-Austin students the first accurate method for determining the temperature profile of a flowing oil well or gas well, dubbed “The McKetta Method” and still used today.

Fun Facts

 * To this day, McKetta still calls his former students who are over 65 on their birthdays each year. McKetta says he averages four calls a day.
 * McKetta had a strict policy that when the bell rang at 8 a.m., the classroom door would be locked. He promised that if he was ever late, class would be canceled. He was only late one time, so his class was dismissed and his students picked him up and carried him to Scholz's Beer Garden where they shared pitchers of beer together.