Robert E. Doherty (1885–1950) was an American electrical engineer who served as the third President of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Doherty was born in Clay City, Illinois,[1] then a rural area without electricity or a telegraph office.
He began to learn telegraphy while in high school and after graduation, worked as a telegrapher for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
He attended a lecture during his freshman year by Charles Steinmetz of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York.
He also implemented an approach to undergraduate education in the 1940s called the "Carnegie Plan", a philosophy in which "students were taught to apply fundamental knowledge to solve practical problems and were required to learn about and appreciate academic disciplines outside their primary area of study".