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Robert (Rob) Crisler returned to Starkville to visit the MSU campus during the James Worth Bagley College of Engineering’s annual E-Day. An event that invites engineering alumni back to the engineering campus to recall their college days, to reconnect with their alma mater and to experience the progressive changes within the college and the university.

Crisler is a successful business development manager for one of America’s largest generators of electricity, The Southern Company. As he strolled the campus with his wife Anita and his 16-year-old daughter Rebecca, he reminisced and described nostalgic memories of his days here at Mississippi State. One of those recollections took him back to 1973, the year he began working with Alabama Power as a co-op student, while beginning his electrical engineering (EE) studies at Mississippi State. He discovered the job as a result of being involved with the MSU Cooperative Education Program (Co-op). Co-op connects students with employers, so they have an opportunity to gain practical experience in their chosen field of study. Crisler credits his co-op experience as one of the valuable opportunities that set him up for success in life.

“My advice to any parents concerned about their college graduates getting a job after graduation and to the graduates themselves—get involved with the cooperative education program. It was a phenomenal, “hands-on,” experience for me and it really helped me put it all together—making the connection between classroom knowledge and applying that to real-world projects.”

Crisler could have began his career with Alabama Power after gaining his undergraduate EE degree, but his six semesters of co-op showed him that a graduate degree in electrical power systems would carry him a long way up the road to success with the company. In 1981, he earned his master’s degree and began working with Alabama Power. Thirty years later, Crisler thanks his mentor and former MSU Faculty Adviser, Paul B. Jacob, for convincing him to attend graduate school before embarking on his career.

“Professor Jacob was really like a second father to me, and really, now that I look back, I realize that the professors who had higher expectations of their students were also the people who seemed to care and helped their students the most.”

Three decades later Crisler credits MSU’s sense of family and his experiences with peer learning support groups for enabling him to know how to work his way up through the ranks at Alabama Power and Southern Company Services, subsidiaries of The Southern Company, to a corporate level position at the parent company where he creates wholesale business deals in Alabama and Florida for one of the largest producers of electricity in the United States.

“You know, I said that Mississippi State really gives you a sense of family and that may sound ‘cliché’ but if it wasn’t for this university, I wouldn’t have met my wife. I can attest to the saying that, ‘College years really are some of the best years of your life,’ and it changes your life for years to come. For instance, I returned to the MSU campus to defend my graduate degree thesis; that same weekend I attended a football game and that is when I met Anita. She was just starting her MBA degree at the time and one year later we were married.”

The Crisler’s have two girls and live in Birmingham, Ala. Rebecca, their 11th-grader, was standing beside her dad smiling as he recalled fond memories. We asked him if he thought Rebecca would carry out the family tradition and be the second-generation member to attend MSU.

“Well, Rebecca is my last chance; our older daughter, Laura, attended Auburn because she wanted to major in speech pathology, which isn’t offered at MSU. Rebecca is looking at the architecture or interior design program here. I’m really trying to convince Rebecca to study engineering, but I don’t know how successful I’ll be.”

Rebecca laughed and responded with, “We’ll see dad.”