Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

Alumni Awards, Fall 2005

William Anderson (BSCE 1967) and Nathaniel Fox (MSCE and PhD 1966) received the Professional Achievement Citation in Engineering from the ISU Alumni Association.

Chris Dudding (BSConE 2000) was assigned as the project director to renovate the chancery building (“chancery” is the term for a main embassy building) in Afghanistan, which was built in the 1960s. It is very historic and means a lot to many people. Even though he is the youngest Foreign Service Construction Engineer, he will be managing the whole project, which is very rare.

Elizabeth Hunter (BSCE 1997) was honored with the James A. Hopson Alumni Volunteer Award from the ISU Alumni Association.

David Sabatini (PhD 1989), Sun Oil Company Chair of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma (OU), recently was honored by OU with a David Ross Boyd Professorship. Established in 1945, the professorship carries a lifetime title to provide continuing recognition to faculty who have demonstrated superior teaching ability, leadership, and student guidance. It is named for OU's first president.

Profiles

William C. Anderson

Currently executive director of the Council of Engineering & Scientific Specialty Boards (CESB), William C. Anderson's history of service and leadership in the profession of engineering extends back to 1985, when he assumed direction of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE).

While with the AAEE, Anderson used his expertise in certification to lead a team that in the early 1990s created the professional environmental engineering licensing examination still used by states today.

He is the author or co-author of more than 100 environmental engineering technical and policy articles and has pioneered several seminal publications in the field, including the AAEE's quarterly magazine and Who's Who in Environmental Engineering, the acknowledged reference source for environmental engineering specialists.

In addition to his extensive work in the field of certification, he was managing partner from 1973 to 1999 of his own 45-person engineering and architectural firm, Packard & Anderson, in upstate New York.

Anderson is a member of ISU's Order of the Knoll and a lifetime member of the ISU Alumni Association.

Nathaniel Sill Fox

In four decades since completing his work at Iowa State University, Nathaniel Fox has developed a number of innovative geotechnical engineering solutions. One year after receiving his master's and PhD degrees, Fox pioneered the use of lime and lime-cement soil stabilization for improving highway and airfield construction methods for unstable soils in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam.

His stabilization methods and design concepts, proven by laboratory and field research in the war zone during the conflict, were incorporated into arguably one of the largest chemical soil stabilization projects worldwide since the Romans built their lime-stabilized roads throughout Europe 2,000 years ago.

After changing careers from military engineer to private consultant in 1970, Fox founded a geotechnical and environmental consulting firm that within five years expanded to become one of the 500 leading engineering consulting firms in the U.S.

His third career move, in 1990, was to invent a new concept in ground improvement that became the leading ground improvement method utilized in the U.S. to support commercial buildings. This method, known as Geopier® soil reinforcement, is presently being practiced in almost all of the 48 contiguous states and in 11 other countries.

In 2005, Fox will finally achieve his initial goal of generating a construction volume of $50 million per year with the system. Present estimates are that total world Geopier volume will reach $65 million for the year 2005.

Not to rest on his laurels, Fox has invented a supplemental ground improvement system known as the Impact™ Pier system, which this year, in its first full year of use in the marketplace, will result in approximately $8 million in construction revenues worldwide. The Impact system has all the earmarks of the Geopier system, and Fox expects that it, too, may eventually achieve the milestone of generating $50 million per year in construction volume.

Fox has been awarded more than 50 patents and co-patents for innovative geotechnical engineering solutions since 1966.

Elizabeth Hunter

With 3,500 Iowa State University alumni living in Omaha, Council Bluffs, and the surrounding communities, some might find it surprising that in the fall of 2002 there was no active alumni club in the area. That was, until the ISU Alumni Association met a civil engineer named Elizabeth Hunter. Since that time, Hunter has been the face of the ISU Alumni Association Club of Omaha-Council Bluffs.

She jumped right in and immediately began developing creative ways to engage alumni in her area. She was integral to the ISU Alumni Association's development of electronic communications—including e-mail newsletters and Web sites—for the club's program, and she has consistently viewed each opportunity to re-energize the alumni base in Omaha-Council Bluffs as a welcomed challenge. Her nominators describe her as enthusiastic, creative, resourceful, and an avid Cyclone fan.

Currently a civil engineer for Leo A. Daly, Hunter was very involved as an undergraduate student with the Society for Women Engineers and the Team PrISUm solar car at ISU. She continues to organize Team PrISUm gatherings as an alumna. She was inducted into Chi Epsilon, the civil engineering honor society, in 2002, and she is a past recipient of the ISU Women's Club Patricia Miller Memorial Award for women leaders and the Buick Volunteer Spirit Award.

Hunter, who earned a master's degree in civil engineering and community and regional planning from the University of Nebraska in 2004, is active in and a past president of the Society of Women Engineers' Eastern Nebraska section and is vice chair of the Engineer's Roundtable for the Omaha metro area.