For entertainers At FIE

Engineering faculty members possess many skills, insights, and abilities that may go unnoticed by their professional colleagues when their primary contact occurs at professional meetings. However, the students of the exemplary faculty members may well know that the professor enjoys playing a banjo, or guitar, or piano. Another group of students may know that their faculty member earns spending money as a stand-up-comic outside the classroom. Some faculty in engineering paint with water colors, oils, and other media. When do the faculty members reveal this other aspect of their life to trusted professional colleagues? At the Grand Old Opry Hotel in Nashville a few years ago, the FIE organizing committee allowed a group of engineering faculty to host their first session late one night and entitled it, "For Entertainers Only." The name was used to protect the reputation of the faculty, in case there were violent uprisings concerning the \´right-brain\´ actions. Inhibited and courageous performers did allow a few nonperformers into the room and the show went long after the nominal closing time.