Ladies and Gents,

The Fall/Winter 2015 issue of Missouri S&T Magazine has now made a quantum jump in significance, importance and intelligent reporting about issues and topics relating to alumni contributions. Obviously many other topics aside from the great inventors need to be addressed but the inclusion of these several alumni inventors is a great step forward.

My suggestion is that the topical word “innovators” be the word to replace “inventors” since S&T/UMR/MSM alumni have made U.S., even world-class, contributions in other areas of importance, such as marketing, finance, management, military leadership, etc. Also you may want to consider the idea of replacing the R&D acronym in describing the activities that it now includes, but add an “I” for innovation since the latter word is becoming more widely used in industry, especially in the computer, information, agriculture and medical circles.

Perhaps you might consider this suggestion for future feature articles.

Jerry D. Plunkett, CerE’53, MS CerE’54
Dixon, Mo.