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Alumni - Success Stories - Walter Lange

My Career and Michigan Tech

Hi there. Right now I am composing this article from my office in Singapore where I am the Vice President of Strategic Marketing for Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. I firmly believe that Michigan Tech was a major contributor in my success and career. But how did I get here? Well, read on.

The University: Let’s start with the school itself. I started looking for a college just like most of you did, while a junior in high school. However, (1967) we didn’t get to travel all over and much of the looking was done via letters and reading. My dad suggested that I supplement my looking with a poll of managers in the Detroit area where we lived. It was the best piece of advice I could have gotten. 100% of the folks I surveyed suggested Michigan Tech. Why? All said Tech gave a “true” engineering degree that really prepared you for the work force. A superb engineering degree and affordable tuition? I was on my way! (...and since then my initial “poll” has been verified many times over.)

The “Metallurgy Dept”: Okay, here it got tough. What does one do when one has an interest in everything? Well for me the answer was metallurgy. The original interest came from a summer course I took where this nutty professor (school un-named) froze a banana in liquid nitrogen and used it as an example of the change in properties of materials…that is until he shattered it…we smelled banana in the classroom for weeks. So with a great degree of “unknown”, but a fascination with why things behaved the way they did, I was off to “da Tech”.

What did I find and how MTU prepared me: I always told folks that I wanted to be a physical materials specialist. I “would never work in a foundry” and “never work in electronics”. Well like most things neither statement was right and as I found out, both industries are fascinating. MTU simply had the most caring and dedicated staff I have ever seen; from the head of the dept to the technicians and secretaries. It was “home” to me. So much so that when it came to grad school, although I did interview and look elsewhere, I decided to stay on and specialize in phase transformations in Fe-C steels. A long way from strategic marketing? At first glance yes, but then again NO. The materials department teaches you more than how to interpret microstructures. From the moment I stepped into the department I found I was immersed in a place that emphasized thinking, and made sure you knew what to do with it. Thus while I have changed jobs many times over the years, I knew how to: plan my work, research and find information, critically analyze the information, prepare a discussion and stand up in front of your peers and discuss the findings. Believe it or not critical thinking and communications were probably the most fundamental skills that I did not value that became most valuable to me. The fundamentals simply don’t change. And these are the things that I have counted on over the years…and MTU, well the school has gone through many changes but the fundamentals that prepare the student to succeed in the marketplace have not changed. Courses and professors in the Materials department may have changed but the focus on success and preparation for every single student is still there. The times change— the family doesn’t.

So let’s take a look at my career: I spent 28 years at IBM. I started in a department of materials specialists. My first job was signing off materials specs for the “boxes” that we built. In addition, I was the materials person assigned as the surfaces “expert” where I was in charge of the Auger system. From there I progressed to managing that dept. I moved within IBM and became a “packaging engineer” with a specialization in thin films and “solder/braze” metallurgies. ( I have patents in the field.) Through a whole series of jobs, I do not have time and space to show here, I worked my way into being the program director for our CMOS technology process development team. Now here is where MTU training became critical. The job I loved, moved to another location and I decided not to go with it. Rather, I moved to a job of business office for our memory products and from that I launched the first true product marketing group in IBM microelectronics. How you say? My manager at the time recruited me to the jobs. His comment “I can find plenty of people to manage this group but I can’t find good thinkers. You can learn the job but I need you to think”.

MTU engineering discipline and effective communications skills have proved invaluable in all aspects of my career. From the first business/marketing job I managed several other startup marketing groups for IBM and after 28 years my family and I decided to head to Singapore for the adventure of our lives.

Regrets about my time at MTU? Absolutely none. Do I recommend it? Absolutely yes. My recommendations 1) Know and expect that for the most of us job changes are going to be part of your career and plan for it. 2) Strongly consider MTU – the education is terrific. 3) For a great education in a most special “family” look at Materials engineering and finally and most importantly 4) pick what you love, learn to plan, communicate and THINK.

Walter F. Lange BS 1973, MS 1977, PhD 1978

Vice President, Strategic Marketing
Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Pte Ltd
Singapore

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