Working at Iowa State is more of a hobby than a job for Frank Kayser, a professor in material science and engineering, one in which he said he will miss when he retires in December.

Kayser received his bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame and his master’s degree from Massachusetts Institution of Technology. He came to ISU in 1963 after working more than a dozen years in the automotive industry.

“I’m one of the few engineering professors with a lot of working experience,” Kayser said.

Kayser is an expert in metals and worked at General Motors and Ford where he said his job was to improve materials on cars to make them better and less expensive to produce. He said a large part of his job was to try to stay ahead of the other car manufacturers.

Kayser said the companies he worked for would buy every competitors’ car model and take them out to the test track to drive them under certain conditions. He said they would also dismantle them and see how they worked.

“I would go out there probably one day a month and look at how everyone else was making their stuff, what they were making it out of, how we could make ours better and what we could steal from them,” Kayser said.

Kayser said he left General Motors under strained circumstances. “It was an ethical decision when I left there.”

The circumstances surrounding his decision may have been due to a federal publication which, he said, has not yet been declassified.

“Well, it should no longer be classified in my opinion,” Kayser said, “I may just publish it and they can come and try and put me in jail.”

Kayser said he decided to come to ISU because he liked the people and the Ames lab. “It was a really beautifully equipped laboratory, and still is,” Kayser said.

Kayser said he always wanted to be a teacher and believes that working is an important aspect in teaching.

“I don’t think any engineering professor should teach without working,” Kayser said.

Kayser said he uses his experiences to help him teach.

“Most of the information that I dispense in the classroom comes from working,” he said.

Kayser is from Ohio and spent a large part of his life in a section called “Ironville” where he said his father and many of his relatives worked in steel factories.

He followed in his family’s footsteps, as have two of his five children. One of his sons is a materials expert on the engine for the space shuttle and the other works in aerospace. Both are graduates from the engineering department at ISU.

Kayser and his wife Eileen were childhood sweethearts and have been married since 1952. “She’s an angel,” Kayser said. “She doesn’t have a single flaw.”

After retirement, Kayser said he plans to stay in Ames for at least two more years to work on his research and publish some of his writings. He has future plans to move west where four of his children live.