GENESYS, Graduate Engineering Education System

Research scientist Dr. Benjamin Patz came to Cape Canaveral to teach GENESYS, Graduate Engineering Education System in the 1960s. Dr. Patz describes the state of the art system funded by the Florida legislature using technology to connect students and faculty live from different sites for the purpose of engineering education.

In the GENESYS Program at the Cape his students were people working at Martin Marietta and NASA. Dr. Patz says, “They had interesting problems they would discuss with you… It was a good chance to go over control systems, electromagnetic fields, the boundary value problems.”

ABOVE:  1967 photo of Dr. Benjamin W. Patz, center, in a meeting with Martin engineers, management, and research scientists on the Solar Probe Project at Martin Marietta in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Phil Gregory, engineer, is seated to the far left. Dr. Donald Beatty Wall, a mechanical engineer and manager, is seated second from the right. Dr. Wall later left Martin to work at the University of Central Florida and started his own company, Central Florida Engineering Services. In this excerpt from an oral history interview on October 31, 2011 Dr. Patz discusses the GENESYS program and recalls an extremely rewarding period when he worked in the RATS Department, Research and Advanced Technology Systems at Martin Marietta in Middle River on gas discharge phenomena prior to coming to work at Martin Marietta in Orlando.

LISTEN (8:21)

Dr. Benjamin Patz’s scientific contributions in the Central Florida area include working in the GENESYS Program at Cape Canaveral, Lockheed Martin, teaching at the Naval Training Equipment Center, Rollins College, and the University of Central Florida. His students from the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at UCF recall Professor Patz as a patient teacher who spent diligent time with everyone, undergraduate or graduate.

Explore additional memories of Dr. Patz by searching OrlandoMemory.info using the term “PATZ.”

LISTEN to the rest of the interview with Mrs. Patz. 

LISTEN Part I (2:48)

LISTEN Part II  (7:39)

LISTEN Part IV (8:43)

Dr. Benjamin Patz interview segments.

LISTEN Part 1 (4:14)

LISTEN Part 2 (8:21)

LISTEN Part 3 (6:19)

LISTEN Part 4 (3:17)

LISTEN Part 5 (8:43)

LISTEN Part 6 (6:01)

LISTEN Part 7 (:52)

LISTEN Part 8 (2:36)

LISTEN Part 9 (4:25)

LISTEN Part 10 (2:48)

LISTEN Part 11 (7:32)

LISTEN Part 12 (4:52)

LISTEN Part 13 (4:56)

LISTEN Part 14 (6:48)

LISTEN (3:58) Patrick Air Force Base