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Featured Dean

Oscar Barton

Morgan State University Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. School of Engineering.

United States of America

Oscar Barton, Jr., PhD, PE is a Professor and Dean of the Morgan State University Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. School of Engineering. A native of Washington, D.C., he received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Tuskegee (Institute) University, his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Howard University in 1993. Serving as its 3rd Dean, he joined Morgan from George Mason University after having established its Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Volgenau School of Engineering. Prior to joining Mason, he began his academic career at the United States Naval Academy.  While at the US Naval Academy and in its 163-year history, Dr. Barton was one of only three African- Americans to obtain the rank of tenured full professor and the first to achieve this milestone in the Division of Engineering and Weapons, Division I. In 2010, he was the first African-American to lead the Mechanical Engineering Department as chair. As the founding mechanical engineering department chair at Mason, Dr. Barton ushered growth of the department from 3 faculty and 12 students to 17 faculty and 385 undergraduate students and 6 doctoral students as of spring 2020. Under his leadership the undergraduate program received initial EAC-ABET accreditation retroactive to fall of 2015, reaccredited to fall 2024, established state-of- the-art teaching and research labs on the Mason’s Sci-Tech campus, and established an interim Ph.D. program.  Dr. Barton’s research focuses on the development of approximate closed form solutions for linear self- adjoint systems, those that govern the responses of composite structures, and the analysis of dynamic systems. More recently, he investigated the dynamic response of flexible composite structures subject to periodic and random excitation. He has published over 60 journal and conference articles on these topics.  Dr. Barton is a Fulbright IEA HBCU Scholar-France & Senegal, an elected fellow of ASME, and he was ASME’s 2024 Edwin F. Church Medal recipient. He is a Registered Engineer licensed to practice in the State of Maryland. He chaired ASME’s Committee on Engineering Education, ASME’s Nominating Committee, served as a member of ASME Public Affairs and Outreach Council, and served as a member- at-large on the Engineering Accreditation Commission’s Executive Committee of ABET, after having served numerous years as a program evaluator and commissioner. He currently serves as a member on the Board of Trustees for Missouri University S & T, ASME Foundation Board of Directors, Army Education Advisory Committee and National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. He is Vice- Chair for the Council of HBCU Engineering Deans and is a member of the Academic Advisory Council for ABET.
“CPR – Curiosity, Passion and Risk Taking”

Oscar Barton, Jr. is Dean of the Morgan State University, Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. School of Engineering. Some might think of him as a bit of a Washington, D.C. “home town hero”. Barton was born in the District of Columbia at Freedmen’s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital). With deep roots in D.C., Barton’s knowledge, experience and impact have grown and flourished globally since then. Still, he remains passionate about his upbringing in the District, and – in fact – and remains a fixture there as owner and landlord of a 1898 townhouse.

Oscar’s early activities held youthful appeal and suggested other possible pathways to adulthood. Designing, building and racing go carts, his profile today might be as a Formula One champion. At middle school he became leader and drummer in the group Chocolate City Band and Show, suggesting he might have become today’s Grammy winner. Call it fate, luck or the patience of his parents, Barton credits his parents for not discouraging his enthusiasms or options, but guiding him through experience to who he is and where he is today. He talks about his first and always mentor – his Dad, who served in both WWII and the Korean War, and instilled in his son the value and ethics of being and doing one’s best. Stressing that challenge and risk accompany bold action, that failure becomes a learning opportunity. While a teenager, Oscar’s bold action took wings – following an interest in aerospace to achieving his solo pilot’s license to fly private aircraft. These years of imagining and making, problem solving and making things
work reinforced his interest in taking the risk of unanticipated consequence and turning that into problem solving and success. This sparked consideration of a path toward an architecture or possibly civil engineering destination. As life happens, Barton received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Tuskegee and his Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Howard University. He began his academic career at the United States Naval Academy and was the first African-American tenured full professor to lead the
Mechanical Engineering Department as chair. In 2014 he moved to George Mason University and established the mechanical engineering program and launched the Department of Mechanical Engineering which has grown and flourished since its inception. Barton has served as Dean of Engineering at Morgan State since 2020.

As a distinguished and multi-awarded dean of engineering, Barton reflects on how his thinking and approach to the profession has evolved. Certainly it all began at home with his parents and family. Later, he learned and absorbed the teaching and practice of leading Black educator and Tuskegee founder Booker T. Washington, at the same time developing an understanding of the South in the era of Jim Crow. He blended this with the writings and activism of W.E.B. Du Bois – a northerner and first Black person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. Barton embraced the power of both sensibilities while seeing himself more on the analytical side of things, as evidenced through his significant research and publishing portfolio.

Still a registered engineer licensed to practice in Maryland, a dynamic dean and clearly a role model with a “can do it” pioneering attitude, Barton relishes opportunity to create new programs and experiences, including mechatronics engineering at the undergraduate level and sustainable urban environmental engineering at undergraduate and Ph.D. levels. The possibility of building architectural and construction engineering programs motivates him. Beyond and bigger than even those goals is what Oscar sees as taking up the opportunity to be a “beacon of excellence” in what the world is experiencing as tough times. Struggle demands resilience. And excellence in engineering demands what Barton short-hands as “CPR – Curiosity, Passion and Risk Taking”. Take it to heart from a risk-taking and high achiever who learned it and practices what he learned in his D.C. home town and mid-Atlantic professional experience.