Former Department Head John Kobza Retiring This Spring
In 2013, Professor John Kobza and Professor Emeritus Wayne T. Davis knelt on two-by-four planks and stared down an elevator shaft at the guts of what would one day be the John D. Tickle Engineering Building at the University of Tennessee.
Kobza had just interviewed for the department head position in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE). Davis, then the dean of the Tickle College of Engineering (TCE), had invited Kobza to the construction site to illustrate his vision for the college—and ask Kobza to join it.
“There was good alignment with my skill set and the things that needed to be done,” Kobza recalled. “Everything came together nicely.”
Kobza served as the ISE department head for the next decade, helping to transform ISE’s curriculum, its structure, and its very culture.
“When I started, there were some divisions in the department,” Kobza said. “I worked to create support for faculty members and a sense of connectedness between them. My mission as a department head was to make the ISE department a community where everybody is supported and encouraged to become the best version of themselves.”
Kobza stepped down in August of 2023, succeeded by current Department Head Mingzhou Jin. After two additional years on the teaching faculty, Kobza will retire from UT at the end of the spring 2025 semester.
“Dr. Kobza’s impacts on students, faculty, and the department have been profound,” Jin said. “Under his leadership, our department grew on all fronts—with doubled enrollments, record-high research expenditures, many new faculty hires, and a positive, efficient departmental culture.”
Identifying and Overcoming Weaknesses
As a former researcher in systems featuring uncertainty, Kobza did not arrive at UT with a plan for how the department ‘should’ run. Instead, he focused on the people that create ISE.
“People are the most flexible and powerful part of a system, but they’re also the most difficult to deal with,” he explained. “You need connect with them, communicate with them, find out what their needs are and work on meeting those.”
The first thing that struck him was how strongly the department prioritized solo research projects.
“Every faculty member doesn’t necessarily excel at every task,” he said. “Maybe Professor X is great at getting funding, but they don’t do as good a job of managing graduate students or getting published.”
Kobza began encouraging the ISE faculty to identify their weaknesses and be open about them—then created resources to help overcome them. He hired staff to help write project budgets and proposals, letting faculty focus on their teaching and research strengths.
He also instituted faculty retreats at the start and end of every semester, blocking out time for reflection and planning at the individual and department levels.
Each change Kobza introduced brought the faculty closer together and improved the caliber of research coming out of the department, making his own job just a bit easier.
“People have an inherent need to get better, and that works in your favor as a manager,” he explained. “The idea behind servant leadership is taking action to meet the needs of others. Then, they get better at their jobs, the organization gets better, and it’s better for everybody.”
Fostering Student Connections
As the ISE faculty culture shifted toward collaboration, Kobza began looking to improve student connectedness as well. He had been considering the generous donations of two ISE alumni, John D. Tickle and Eric Zeanah.
“What are we doing in our curriculum so that in 30 years we’ve got people like them who still want to be involved and help current Vols?” Kobza wondered.
Under Kobza’s leadership, the department began pushing co-ops and internships to give ISE students real-world experience. Kobza created and taught a new course introducing sophomores to ISE, fostering a stronger sense of community between them and letting him form personal connections with each class.
That course had a profound effect on alum Grant Kobes (BS ISE ’21), now an automation and machining engineer at Honeywell.
“I found his enthusiasm for the principles of industrial engineering inspiring,” Kobes recalled. “As he discussed the wide array of careers that fell under the umbrella of industrial engineering, I could see myself in many of them.”
Leveraging People’s Passions
In his first year at UT, Kobes founded the university’s competitive robotics team, YNOT. The team is part of the VEX Robotics league, which hosts annual competitions in which students from across the world and at all grade levels build robots to compete in novel challenges.
Kobza remembers stumbling on YNOT members working on their robot in the basement of Perkins Hall and being first confused (was building robots really ISE?), then intrigued.
“After talking with Grant, I could definitely see the systems integration aspect of the VEX Robotics program,” Kobza recalled. “I already was trying to do some outreach with Knox County Schools, and all of a sudden, here’s this program that’s already doing outreach across the state and a student who is energized about getting other people energized about robots.”
Just as he had encouraged ISE faculty to play to their strengths, Kobza decided to give Kobes and his YNOT teammates the lead on several outreach projects to local Knoxville schools.
“My philosophy is, if you’ve got people who are passionate about something, give them the resources that they need and let them go,” Kobza said.
YNOT went on to win the VEX U World Championship in 2021, but Kobes said his memories of working with Kobza to host local high school robotics teams for a tournament are just as precious.
“Dr. Kobza invested many hours, and significant financial resources from the department, to ensure that (both high school and college) students felt welcome on campus,” said Kobes. “He has influenced thousands of students who have gone on to shape the United States’ manufacturing industry.”
Contact
Izzie Gall (865-974-7203, [email protected])