When Patrick Clasen ’04 MS’07 arrived at Lehigh from St. Louis, Missouri, he didn’t expect to start a company. He never could have predicted that a childhood interest in aquariums would turn into a career in product development or that a student project would launch a successful business. Least of all did he expect that, years later, he’d return to the classroom to teach the very courses that sparked his entrepreneurial journey.
The First Prototype
Once Clasen was on campus, he quickly immersed himself in his studies. Alongside his fraternity brother and roommate, Timothy Marks ’04 M’06, he began exploring how they could turn their technical skills and shared interests into something of their own.
That opportunity came in Lehigh’s Integrated Product Development (IPD) program, where interdisciplinary teams of engineering and business students spend a year taking a product from concept to market. The pair began developing a product line that would eventually become EcoTech Marine, a company that manufactures high-tech equipment for saltwater reef aquariums. They combined their engineering expertise, technical skills, entrepreneurial mindset, and passion. Marks and his friend Justin Lawyer had already been building and selling aquarium equipment before the class began, but IPD gave the idea a team and a structure.
While sitting in an engineering class, Clasen learned about Lehigh’s Invitation to Innovate competition. He and Marks applied and won $2,500 to put toward developing their product.
“We brought the ideas and passion; the Lehigh IPD program gave us the venue,” says Clasen. “My co-founders, Tim Marks and Justin Lawyer, and I kept pushing after the course was over and built our ideas into a real business.”
The product they designed in class ultimately wasn’t one they ended up manufacturing, but that undergraduate project led to graduate school at Lehigh. Meanwhile, the two continued to work on EcoTech Marine.
“It wasn’t until then that we had the idea for the VorTech propeller pump,” Clasen says. “The VorTech was the idea that really caught on.”
The VorTech pump brought a new approach to aquarium technology, using a magnetic coupling that keeps the pump’s electrical components outside the water while circulating water inside saltwater and reef aquariums. The innovation grabbed the market’s attention, and EcoTech Marine took off.
Passing it Forward
Now, Clasen is returning to where it all began: the classroom.
Over the course of two semesters, he’ll teach the two-course Integrated Product Development sequence in Lehigh’s Master of Engineering in Technical Entrepreneurship program, showing students how to innovate within a company, navigate product development, and think like entrepreneurs. For Clasen, it’s a chance to return to the courses that helped shape his own career.
“I’m honored to have this full-circle moment to teach the class I took as an undergraduate student,” he says. “It’s so meaningful to me to have an influence on students today and to have the opportunity to help them achieve their dreams in the same way I was able to through my time at Lehigh.”
His courses will be based at Lehigh’s Mountaintop campus, putting students in the middle of a cross-functional environment built around collaboration and innovation. Surrounded by students, faculty, and creatives from different disciplines, they’ll have access to the kind of space and opportunities that Clasen had to work hard to find when he was starting out.
“The students will be able to take advantage of all the things that were difficult for us to access back in 2003,” says Clasen. “At the time, we had to beg, borrow, and steal to get machine shop time. We had to go after hours to build prototypes of the VorTech. Now, it’s handed to these students, and they’re able to make use of those opportunities and spaces.”
That access is part of what Clasen hopes to bring to his students, along with the opportunity to turn an idea into something real.
Inspiring the next generation is an important part of Clasen’s return to Lehigh. As he enters this next chapter, he hopes to share what he’s learned as an engineer, entrepreneur, and educator while giving students the same opportunity to imagine what’s possible.
“I built the class curriculum from the ground up,” Clasen says. “The opportunity to come back and give students the chance to think, reflect, and imagine a future that inspires people is a gift. I’m eternally grateful for the opportunities that Lehigh has given me.”
