Letter from the Chair of the Civil Engineering Institute

Message from the Chair of the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering

Dear alumni and friends,

For all of us, 2020 was a year to remember, reflect upon, and learn from. Although the year was full of challenges due to the global pandemic, the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE) succeeded in adapting and adjusting without compromising the quality of our teaching, research, and service. I am deeply thankful to our faculty and staff for their dedication and hard work, to our students for their patience and understanding, and to our CEI and Advisory Board members for their continued support. I am proud of our success in overcoming so many obstacles, rising to the challenges, and experiencing another productive and successful year.

Our challenges included finding a way to provide our students with lab and hands-on learning experience without compromising their health and safety or quality of education, maintaining our research growth momentum, as well as continuing valuable student organizations engagement and activities. Our faculty was so innovative in adapting to and excelling in offering their classes and labs online and hybrid in a very short time.

On the research side, our research productivity and funding continued to grow substantially. In fact, during 2020 our research expenditures rose by more than 26 percent from 2019 to $2.4 million. We recruited and hired two outstanding new faculty from Stanford and Harvard universities in the important research areas of water quality, air quality, and public health and Ken Walsh who has a background in construction engineering and serves as the chief of staff for our new university president joined our ranks. I am especially proud of our students’ accomplishments at the state and national level. In 2020, our Engineers for International Development participated in the American Water Works Association annual conference. Nearly 2,000 water and wastewater professionals attended this virtual event, and three sponsor-provided competitions were heavily attended by many universities. Our students competed in all three competitions, Digital Knowledge, Poster, and the 17th Annual AWWA Student Water Challenge and won first place in all three events. No university has ever completed this hat-trick. I am also proud of our Construction Management Association of America student chapter, which won two national scholarships in its first year of existence.

These are only a few of the year’s highlights. I invite you to read this 2020 annual report to learn more about our students and faculty accomplishments during last year. g

With my best wishes for safe and healthy years ahead of you, Sam Salem, PhD, PE, CPC, LEED AP Dewberry Professor and Department Chair Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering