Serving at the University for 30 years, Prof. Roy L. McCullough was considered a “founding father” of the Center for Composite Materials, serving as the associate director or the director of the center since its inception.

Dr. McCullough pressed his students to have a broader perspective on the industry and on practical career skills. Mark A Barteau, Robert L. Pigford Professor of Chemical Engineering and chairperson of the department, said at the General Faculty meeting April 8. He noted that Dr. McCullough came to the University after serving 12 years in industrial laboratories, so he understood the importance of learning for the workplace.

“Roy was a first-rate scientist whose journal articles continue to be widely cited,” Barteau said

He was most interested in understanding the physics and chemistry of interfaces in composites, which are considered in the scientific community to be extremely difficult concepts. Barteau said, and Dr. McCullough became widely recognized as a world leader in composite interfaces.

Barteau remembered Dr. McCullough’s good-natured humor and his insistence on proclaiming to everyone his Texas heritage. “He was known to claim that his specialty Texas chili simply could not be made in Delaware,” Barteau said, because “there was just not enough possum and armadillo road kill available!”

Another colleague of Dr. McCullough’s described his students as “hand polished,” Barteau said.

Most graduate students are recruited to further the research conducted by professors, Barteau said, but Dr. McCullough rarely took credit. “You would think he was a smiling observer,” another colleague said. “The lion’s share of the intellectual content came from Roy, but the credit always went to the student.”

In conclusion, Barteau said “That, more than anything is what we will miss about Roy---his unwavering commitment and example to the education of the individual student as our primary mission. A faculty career is always a matter of balancing many pulls and priorities. Let us remember Roy’s example, and let it be said that he had his priorities straight.”

Dr. McCulloug died Dec. 21, 2001