University of Nebraska Professor Receives Prestigious Education Award from the National Society of Professional Engineers

E. Terence Foster, Ph.D., P.E., F.NSPE, of Omaha, Neb., was recently awarded the 2014 Professional Engineers in Higher Education Engineering Education Excellence Award by PEHE and the National Society of Professional Engineers at the annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

The PEHE Sustaining Universities Program of NSPE established the Engineering Education Excellence Award to annually recognize engineering educators and faculty who have demonstrated the ability to link engineering education with professional practice. The recipients must be licensed and have a faculty appointment in an ABET-accredited engineering program. Recipients receive $5,000 towards continued implementation of their best practices.

Dr. Foster is an engineering professor and a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Nebraska, where he also holds a courtesy professorship at the Aviation Institute. His doctorate in engineering is from the University of California at Berkeley, and his undergraduate education was from MIT. Foster is a licensed professional engineer in 11 states and is a certified professional constructor. Currently he serves as associate director of the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction. In this position, Foster has led the creation of the EAC-ABET accredited Construction Engineering Program, which offers degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. Past positions have been held with Union Pacific as an assistant vice president and with MultiTec as president. In his early career, he was a senior research engineer at the Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an Army captain during the Vietnam era (receiving the Army Commendation Medal), a Fulbright scholar, and a vice president of a computer service subsidiary of HDR.

He has served as the Nebraska state society president, PEHE vice president, and national director of the National Society of Professional Engineers. Foster has been on the boards of two financial institutions: the Nebraska Engineering and Architecture Examiners (as chair) and the Western Heritage Museum (as vice president). In addition, he has served six years on the Board of Governors (as chair) for the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies. Currently, he is starting his fourth three-year term on the National Board of Directors of the American Institute of Constructors.

For more information on the NSPE/PEHE Engineering Education Excellence Award, please visit the NSPE web site at www.nspe.org/Awards.