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Decisions at the ballot box influence policies that support engineering standards and public safety.April 2014
NSPE TODAY
Air Force Educator Named Federal Engineer of the Year
NSPE member Captain Timothy Callahan, P.E., who has made a mark on Air Force education, has been named the 2014 Federal Engineer of the Year by NSPE’s Professional Engineers in Government.
Callahan, of Centerville, Ohio, is course director for the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Civil Engineer School at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “It was an incredible honor,” he says of receiving the award. “I know it was a busy year and we accomplished a lot at our school, but it’s just amazing.”
As director of the Air Force Civil Engineer Basic Course, Callahan leads 30 faculty and 28 guest instructors, integrating 176 guard, reserve, and active duty officers in the career field’s first “total force” initial skills courses. Callahan also leads the school’s commitment to online education, broadcasting and recording numerous lessons and building content for use in continuing education classes. He not only orchestrated the creation of distance-learning content for future editions of the Air Force Civil Engineer Basic Course, which are expected to save 1,200 instructor hours and $300,000 annually, but also created the school’s first online civil PE exam review course.
Some of Callahan’s other commendable achievements include building a new online feedback platform for the school’s 6,000 students, and developing the Air Force Institute of Technology’s first Provincial Reconstruction Team project management course. The feedback platform built by Callahan reduced costs by 90% and his Provincial Reconstruction Team project management course taught more than 75 Air Force, Army, and Navy engineers how to best execute Afghanistan’s $400 million Commander Emergency Response Program mission.
Callahan volunteers his time in a number of ways. In 2012 and 2013, he led five Habitat for Humanity building teams. He also volunteers with STEM programs for grade school students. “We’re always encouraging our staff, and I’m one of them, to do a lot of outreach with the younger generation,” he says. “Don’t ever lose track of the fact that we need to build our replacements. As engineers we can get a little lost in whatever our task is, but we always have to keep that bigger picture in play.”
For Callahan, the true mark of success for the current generation of engineers is that the next generation of engineers goes on to do even bigger and better things.
