Robert A. Altenkirch was the President of University of Alabama in Huntsville and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
[1] While an undergraduate at Purdue, Altenkirch became a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
While dean of engineering at MSU, he led the effort to secure National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for the establishment of the MSU Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation in 1990.
During his tenure as vice president, science and engineering expenditures, as reported to NSF, increased by 75 percent from 1997 to 2001.
In addition to the research program, his responsibilities encompassed congressional relations, intellectual property management and economic development.