I’ve spent the last thirty years in academe as a Professor and university administrator.  After an extended tour in Vietnam, I separated from the military in Germany and studied at the Technical University in Munich.  I returned to the U. of Illinois and finished my Doctorate in Civil Engineering in 1973.  Since then I have had “tours of duty” at Georgia Tech, at the U. of Maryland where we lived in Bethesda for two years, and my last duty station – Purdue. 

Maria and I have traveled extensively and I’ve been fortunate enough to hold appointments as a visiting professor at the U. of Sydney (Australia), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and the U. of Karlsruhe.  Maria is from Bad Kissingen, Germany, and we travel to Germany and Europe each summer.   My language facility in German has led to a large number of academic contacts in the German speaking countries as well as Finland, Sweden, Spain, Romania, Hungary, etc.

While at Purdue, I served as Head of the Division of Construction Engineering and Management for over 18 years and an interim year as Head of the School of Civil Engineering.  One perk associated with Purdue’s Rose Bowl appearance (2001) was a ride down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena on New Year’s Eve in the Boilermaker Special  (Purdue’s mascot locomotive).