Engineering Education Excellence Award

Call for Nominations
Deadline: March 31
Download: Nomination form (Microsoft Word document).

The Sustaining Universities Program of the Professional Engineers in Higher Education of the National Society of Professional Engineers has established an award to recognize engineering educators each year.

This national award recognizes engineering faculty who have demonstrated the ability to link engineering education with professional practice. The recipients must be licensed and have a tenure-track faculty appointment in an ABET-accredited engineering program. The recipients of the award will be recognized on the NSPE Web site and will receive a cash prize of $5,000.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology has implemented new criteria and processes for accreditation of engineering education known as EC-2000. The programs that receive accreditation under EC-2000 must demonstrate they have better prepared graduates to become practicing engineers. The Engineering Education Excellence Award has been developed to be supportive of EC-2000 and will recognize faculty members who are working to introduce students to professional practice.

A minority of engineering educators are licensed. PEHE believes that engineering educators should possess the professional designation. To date, a handful of states have enacted legislation to require engineering faculty to become licensed. By instituting this award program, PEHE affirms support of this requirement and will continue to promote and recognize professional licensure among engineering educators.

2010 Engineering Education Excellence Award Winner

Brent Nuttall, P.E.

An associate professor at California Polytechnic State University who incorporates lessons from his 16 years of professional practice into his teaching and emphasizes the PE license was named the 2010 winner of NSPE's Engineering Education Excellence Award.

Brent Nuttall, P.E., of Cal Poly's Architectural Engineering Department, received the honor at the Society's Annual Meeting on July 15.

The Sustaining Universities Program of NSPE's Professional Engineers in Higher Education established the $5,000 award to recognize engineering faculty who link engineering education with professional practice. Recipients must be licensed and hold a tenure-track faculty position in an ABET-accredited program.

Nuttall, an NSPE member who earned a master 's in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.S. in architectural engineering from Cal Poly, is a California-licensed civil and structural engineer. To support its "Learning by Doing" philosophy, Cal Poly offers tenure-track positions to individuals with a master's degree, a PE license, and at least 10 years engineering experience. At Cal Poly, 90% of the full-time tenure track faculty hold a PE license.

Prior to teaching at Cal Poly, Nuttall served as lead structural engineer on projects such as the expansion and renovation of the Getty Museum, seismic evaluation and strengthening of Dodger Stadium, and repair and seismic strengthening of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Nuttall puts his professional practice experience to use in the classroom in many ways. In the project-based Design Laboratories class taken by upper-level students, Nuttall's instruction includes visits to construction sites, slides from personal projects showing typical construction and detailing techniques, and discussions of cost and constructability. He also uses the city hall building in Atascadero, California—where he's lead engineer on an earthquake damage assessment project—as a living laboratory for students to study types of earthquake damage.

Nuttall's on-the-job experiences have also inspired new courses for students. Based on his experience as a design consultant for nine Cal Poly student housing buildings engineered entirely with cold-formed structural steel, Nuttall developed a course on this widely used construction material. He has also taken the lead in developing a new multidisciplinary design course required of all Cal Poly seniors in which engineering students team with architecture, construction management, and landscape architecture students to design projects reviewed by real clients.

Through it all, the associate professor doesn't forget about teaching the importance of licensure. In his design courses, Nuttall teaches students the steps to earning a PE. And when students prepare design documents, he requires them to leave a designated space where their seal and signature would go.