ComingFull Circle
UK grads return to Kentucky for the comforts of family and job satisfaction
By Linda Perry
Some people are lucky and earn a living doing work they love. Others are lucky and live exactly where they want to live. Not everyone gets to do both. UK grads Alan Hawse and his wife, Dr. Jill Robertson Hawse, know they can count themselves among those luckiest people. The couple left central Kentuckyat different times in the early ’90s for employment in California, but they returned to work in the Bluegrass they both love in October 1996 when a fortunate set of circumstances played out.
Today, Alan Hawse, a 1990 UKelectrical engineering graduate, is the director of the Lexington operation of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, a Silicon Valleycompany whose headquarters is in San Jose, Calif. His wife, Dr. Jill Hawse, graduated from the UK College of Pharmacy in 1992 and received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from UKin 1993. She had been employed as a pharmacist at CardinalHillHospital in Lexington between 1996 and early 2001, but for the last three years she has been a stay-at-home mom for the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Anna.She expects to return to her professional work, at least on a part-time basis at first, in the very near future now that her daughter is no longer an infant.
Being able to live in central Kentucky and work in Lexington wasn’t in the cards for Alan and Jillas they were graduating from UK. The not-yet-married couple, who met while contributing to the Kentucky Kernel — he as a photographer, she as a writer and copyeditor — were temporarily separated after he was the first to graduate from UK and went to the Georgia Institute of Technology to obtain his master’s degree in electrical engineering. He was recruited by Cypress Semiconductor Corporation while he was attending Georgia Tech and he subsequently moved to the San Jose, Calif., area upon graduation in 1991 to work for Cypress in what is generally called ‘Silicon Valley.’The couple married in 1992, butJill stayed in Lexington until she completed her doctoral degree in 1993.She then joined him in California.
During the time the couple spent in the GoldenState, they established themselves in their respective professions. Jill worked for Santa Clara County Mental Health as a clinical pharmacist and Alan was involved in writing software to make semiconductor chips. Semiconductor chips are used in electronics such as computers and cell phones to control electrical current.
“Let me tell you about the Valley,” Alan said. “In the valley, it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter who your daddy is, it doesn’t matter where you are from, what matters is your brain. That’s just the way the place is.”
Alan used an analogy to further describe the mindset in the Valley. “It’s like living in Florence during the Renaissance. It is the heart of the economy that’s driving the world right now.”
But as much as he liked being a part of that situation, family was, and is, very important to him and his wife.They both have family roots in Kentucky — Alan is a native of Lexington, and Jill grew up in Georgetown — and Kentucky was ever-present on their minds. When they felt they were really serious about returning to the Bluegrass area, Alan investigated job opportunities in Kentucky. And that’s when their fortunate set of circumstances began to play out.
“I came back (to Kentucky) and got several job offers and then I went back (to San Jose) and said, ‘I have job offers, now what?’”
Two of the powers-that-be at Cypress, the vice president of design and the CEO, were not interested in having to hire someone else to replace Alan. A decision was made to set up a CAD operation in Lexington that Alan would direct.Located in downtown Lexington’s TriangleCenter, which used to be known as Festival Market, Alan’s offices are on the corner of Main and Mill Streets on the first and second floors.
“Cypress is spread out all over the world and I am able to do my job very effectively from here,” Alan said. “In fact, there are as many internal customers east of me as west of me. So I knew I could make it work.”
The organization that he oversees includes about 70 people, with about 33 in Lexington, he said. The other locations in which his employees work include Starkville, Miss., Austin, Texas, Manila, the Republic of the Philippines, and Bangalor, India. He also still runs a group in San Jose. He said he always wanted to be an engineer, but today he finds himself more in the role of manager and less as engineer, as he manages people and projects around the world. He said that overall, the most important business lesson he ever learned is, ‘Schedule is king.’ “I learned it the hard way, just like everybody does,” he said.
“I work on three major things. I run a device physics and interconnect modeling laboratory to do electrical measurements and create mathematical models of the physics of chips. I run an electronic design automation group that creates software that we use to design chips. And I run an IT organization that builds systems for coordinating our design operations worldwide,” Alan said. “We (Cypress) have five hundred designers spread out in 22 locations so I build systems to help manage these projects.”
Although Alan stays in contact onlineand by phone with his employees who are working on projects elsewhere, he does travel to those locations fairly frequently. “I go to all at least once a year and then I spend at least eight weeks in San Jose, generally twice a quarter,” he said.
He estimates that he has hired about 25 UK grads. “UK produces people of as good a quality of any school in the world. The depth is not there. But the top handful of Kentucky people isextraordinarily competitive with the top people anywhere. And I should know because I have hired a bunch of them,” he said.
Alan is confident that he has the very best jobs for electrical engineers in the state of Kentucky. In fact, he says two UK grads who are now working for him also returned to Kentucky after working in other states — Joseph Elias, a 1989 electrical engineering grad returned from Houston, and Scott Savage, a 1993 electrical engineering grad returned from Pittsburgh.
He would like to see more UK grads return to Kentucky. “I’ve always said that the graduate list of the College of Engineering was one of the largest economic development levers that we have,” said Alan. “But I don’t necessarily feel that has been effectively utilized.”
Alan said that there are a lot of smart people who have leftKentucky. “The problem is, as an engineer, you take a risk living in Kentucky. How many semiconductor companies are in Lexington? There’s a critical mass kind of thing and Lexington is a long way from having the critical mass in engineering that makes it.”
Part of the problem, he said, is salary. Cypress, Alan said, has the best paying engineering jobs in Lexington because the pay has to be competitive with California. But he knows that most local electrical engineering companies can’t match that money now. “You have to go out on a limb to come here and that makes it hard.”
He is behind UK President Lee Todd 100 percent in trying to bring talented UK grads back to the state of Kentucky. In fact, in some of his speeches Dr. Todd uses Alan as an example of a successful and talented UK grad who has returned to the Commonwealth. Alan said he met Todd when both were involved in economic development and local community activities.
Alan is also actively involved with UK. He is currently on the advisory board for electrical engineering, and also on the advisory board of the GainesCenter. He and his wife are UK Fellows.
In working for Cypress, one of the biggest, most important companies in its industry, Alan said, he gets to work with the very smartest people in the world AND live in Kentucky. In effect, Alan said, it means that he can play with the big boys, even though he lives in Kentucky.
“We live out in the country . . . on the Elkhorn Creek. I can sit on my patio and I can see my Bluegrass, my tractor, and my trees. Then I can get in my car and drive 17 miles through rolling Bluegrass and I can be in my office in San Jose.”
Perfect.
Photo caption
Alan Hawse took many photographs for the Kentucky Kernel during his undergraduate years at UK. Likewise, the future Mrs. Hawse, Jill Robertson, contributed to the Kernel via writing and copyediting. “It was just as a hobby,” Alan said. “Neither one of us ever had any intention of making a living as a journalist.”
Although he no longer shoots photos, today the walls of his office in TriangleCenter are covered with many photos originally destined for the Kernel. When asked about the possible pressure associated with meeting newspaper deadlines, Alan said that was never a problem for him. “That pressure is trivial compared to the pressure in life.”
Photo caption
Mike Agin was the advisor to the Kentucky Kernel when Alan Hawse was taking photos for the Kernel. The tables are somewhat reversed because nowAgin works for Hawse at Cypress in Lexingtonas communications manager.
Photo caption
Two UK grads now working for Cypress in Lexington also returned to Kentucky after working in other states — Joseph Elias, a 1989 electrical engineering grad returned from Houston, and Scott Savage, a 1993 electrical engineering grad returned from Pittsburgh.