Frank Ordung Science Scholarship

From a one-room schoolhouse in Minnesota to a full professorship at Yale to founding not one but two departments of electrical engineering for the University of California system—such was the academic journey of Philip Franklin “Frank” Ordung. In addition to these accomplishments, Frank also served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was married for 64 years to his wife Betty.

After his service in the Navy, Frank returned to Yale as an instructor in electrical engineering. Soon afterwards, in 1945, he met and married Betty Soergel, a dietitian at the French Hospital in New York City. The couple had two daughters, Christine and Katherine, while Frank was climbing the academic ladder to become a full professor.

In 1962, Frank and Betty responded to the call to “go west, young man, go west” and moved the family to Santa Barbara where Frank became the first chair of electrical engineering at UCSB. In his new position he organized the curriculum, recruited faculty and helped to design the building that ultimately housed the department. During two sabbatical years, Frank taught at the Technical University of Norway in Trondheim and at Rand-Afrikaans University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Frank retired (or tried to) in 1990 but was soon assigned the task of establishing a new electrical engineering program at UC Riverside.

Frank and Betty were active members of Grace Lutheran Church in Santa Barbara, and in 1977 Frank found himself elected to the board of regents of California Lutheran College. He served as a regent until 1986. At that time, the liberal arts college didn’t have an engineering program but, by getting acquainted with the interests of faculty, Frank soon found a way to put the school on the fast track in technology, specifically by donating CLC’s first hypercard to a biology professor.

Frank’s life did not revolve exclusively around engineering. Along with his wife Betty, he was an avid gardener who planted many fruit trees and loved to grow both vegetables and flowers. The couple also had a great interest in travel and took advantage of their retirement years to satisfy that yen.

The Frank Ordung Science Scholarship came into being following Frank’s death in 2010 as a gift from his wife and daughters. Appropriately, the recipient is to be a science major unless and until CLU offers a physics engineering major in the future. At that time, the focus for the award will shift to engineering. Through his many years of service as a regent and through his family’s generosity after his death, there is no doubt that Dr. Frank Ordung made a lasting impact on CLU.