University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering

Louis Clifford Goad

[title]
To Louis Clifford Goad, engineer, industrial executive, for his outstanding leadership in planning and direction of engineering work, and for his contributions to the development of young engineers in the field of management.

Executive Vice President, General Motors Corporation, Detroit, Michigan

  • BS, Mechanical Engineering, 1923

Mr. Goad’s entire professional career has been with General Motors Corporation. He started in 1923 as a young engineer in a subsidiary of the corporation, and five years later, when he was twenty-seven years old, he was transferred to the Muncie plant of Delco-Remy to start that division’s storage battery program. Thus began the unfolding of this man’s genius to develop in young engineers the capacity for taking important responsibility for management. It carried him on to the positions of general manufacturing manager of A.C. Spark Plug Division; Vice President in charge of the accessory group; General Manager of Eastern Aircraft Division (building naval aircraft); General Manager of the Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly Division; member of the Board of Directors and of the Operations Policy Committee of the corporation; General Manager of Fisher Body Division. In 1951 he became Executive Vice President of General Motors Corporation.

Every year Mr. Goad comes to the campus at Urbana to confer with the present holders of the General Motors scholarships. This is one example of his abiding interest in the development of young engineers.

Current as of 1965.