Author Biography: Jack V. Matson

Jack Matson is a prize-winning innovator who develops courses in innovative design based on "intelligent fast failure." As Director of the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education at Penn State's College of Engineering, he brings an original and off-beat approach to teaching engineering design. Dr. Matson's teaching philosophy is to stimulate creativity by encouraging students to risk failure and to realize failure is essential to developing design skills and judgment. He centers his techniques on teaching people to unlearn years of practicing risk aversion, stressing the connection between creativity and risk. "No issue is more important to the engineer or entrepreneur than intelligent failure," says Matson.

Prior to coming to Penn State, he was on the faculty at the University of Houston where he created the course Failure 101 for which he won national recognition. Winner of the first Zell/Lurie Award and Fellowship for the Teaching of Innovation offered by the University of Michigan, Dr. Matson served as a visiting professor of business administration at the University of Michigan. While there, he adapted his theories on innovation and failure in engineering design to entrepreneurship and organized an international conference, "Celebration of Failure."

Also a professor of environmental engineering at Penn State, Dr. Matson is an expert in waste management, industrial water and wastewater treatment, hazardous waste, and expert witnessing. He is an active consultant for corporate and governmental clients and was a commissioner on the Texas Air Control Board. He holds a B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Toledo and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Rice University.

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