Three veteran faculty members who retired this year from Virginia Tech’s Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department have each been named as “professor emeritus” by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors. The honored professors are David Kibler, Tom Murray and Ray Plaut.
Kibler was recruited to Virginia Tech from Penn State University to serve as the head of the CEE department from 1990 until 1994. During his tenure as department head, seven faculty were hired, including National Academy of Engineering member James Mitchell. During Kibler’s four-year tenure, three faculty members received the prestigious National Science Foundation Young Investigator Awards, another three were awarded named professorships by the University’s Board of Visitors, and one person received the University’s W.E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Kibler initiated a Young Faculty Forum to aid in the mentoring process of new faculty, and he invested heavily in renovation projects to improve the teaching and research capabilities of the department at that time. He built CEE’s then state-of-the-art instructional computing lab with 20 PC stations and 10 work stations, renovated the graduate student area, turned Norris 310 into an environmental laboratory, completed work on a 4400-square-foot addition to the structures/materials laboratory, began renovation of the hydrosystems instructional laboratories, and renovated the construction engineering area.
When Kibler stepped down as CEE director, he remained on the faculty as a professor in the hydrosystems area that eventually merged with the environmental group, forming the environmental and water resources engineering program. He taught classes in hydrology, water resources engineering, and hydraulic structure design. His research focused on hydrologic modeling of developing watersheds, flood forecasting and flood control, and urban storm water management. Kibler served as a faculty adviser to the Virginia Tech section of the American Water Resources Association, a group of interdisciplinary students from biological systems engineering, CEE, and agricultural and applied economics looking at diverse problems of water management. He also served as the faculty adviser to the Virginia Tech chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). At the state level, he was a member of the Virginia Transportation Research Council Advisory Committee on Environmental Resources, the Roanoke Valley Regional Storm Water Management Technical Committee, and the Virginia Dam Safety Program Technical Advisory Committee. He was the 2002 technical program chairman for the ASCE Environment & Water Resources Institute Conference.
Kibler has chaired several national committees, including the ASCE Surface Runoff committee, the American Geophysical Union Urban Hydrology committee, and the ASCE Urban Drainage Committee.
In 2008, Kibler received the first G.V. Loganathan Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Civil Engineering Education. The award, presented by the Virginia Tech ASCE chapter, previously was named the CEE Faculty Achievement Award. This award is given annually based upon the voting of current students in the CEE Department.
Murray joined Virginia Tech in 1987 after 17 years with the University of Oklahoma, the last year of which was spent as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University in 1962, Murray was employed as an engineer trainee with the Pittsburgh-Des Moines steel company of Des Moines, Iowa. He earned his master’s degree in 1966 from Lehigh University, and his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics in 1970 from the University of Kansas.
A specialist in structural steel research and design, Murray was responsible for the construction of large laboratories at the University of Oklahoma and Virginia Tech. Murray founded Virginia Tech’s Structures and Materials Laboratory, where he and his graduate students developed alternate methods for connecting beams and columns in buildings in areas that experience high levels of seismic activity. His research and teaching interests include steel connections, pre-engineered building design, and light gage design. Among Murray’s other accomplishments is the development of techniques for building lightweight, affordable floor systems that reduce vibrations in large steel and concrete structures, such as airports and shopping malls. A registered structural engineer, he has been a consultant to numerous state and national government agencies, industrial corporations, and engineering firms.
At Virginia Tech, the Board of Visitors named Murray the Montague-Betts Professor of Structural Steel Design. He received a 2006 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia. Murray was one of 15 statewide college and university faculty selected to receive the Commonwealth’s highest honor for faculty.
He has served on several national committees in the ASCE and a number of other professional organizations. In 1977, the American Institute of Steel Construction presented him with a special citation for contributions to the art of steel construction. In 1991, the group honored Murray with the T. R. Higgins Lectureship Award. He is a member of both the American Institute of Steel Construction and the American Iron and Steel Institute specification committees.
Murray was elected in 2002 to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors that can be accorded an engineer. Academy membership recognizes those who have made important contributions to engineering theory and practice and have demonstrated unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology.
In 1998, he was the first recipient of the Via department’s Alumni Excellence Teaching Award, an honor accorded him again in 2003. The Virginia Tech student chapter of the ASCE presented him with the Faculty of the Year Award in 2002.
Plaut was the Dan H. Pletta Professor of Engineering, serving Virginia Tech’s CEE faculty for 33 years. He was hired in 1975 as the university’s youngest full professor at that time. He taught courses in the analysis, stability and dynamics of structures. His research topics included the use of inflatable structures for flood control, optimal structural design for stability, detection of cracks in rotating shafts, the potential use of ropes to reduce structural response to earthquakes, analysis and testing of the peeling of adhesive tapes and bandages from human skin, the use of adhesives to prevent roof uplift during hurricanes, the behavior of temporary tent-like hangars supported by inflatable arches, the effectiveness of a new type of vibration absorber, a study of the cause of the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the response of tents and building frames to blast loads, the application of geosynthetic layers over columns in soft soil to strengthen embankments, and the design of insulated joints in railroad tracks.
Plaut is internationally known for his research in the use of inflatable dams during floods. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Plaut investigated effective uses of inflatable dams and breakwaters to provide flood control for shorelines, towns, homes, and critical facilities such as water treatment plants and nuclear power plants. He has been interviewed on The Weather Channel, ABC’s "Good Morning America," and CNN. His research has been cited by the London Sunday Times, several newspapers in Asia, and the Environmental News Network’s Web site.
He has a long and distinguished list of awards, including the 1998 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Plaut received both the Alumni Association W.E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching and the association’s Award for Research Excellence. He has received five University Certificates of Teaching Excellence and the James M. Robbins Excellence in Teaching Award from the Cumberland District of the national CE honor society, Chi Epsilon. In 1979, he was elected to the Virginia Tech Academy of Teaching Excellence. He received the ASCE student chapter’s Faculty Excellence Award in 1978 and 2006.
He previously taught at the University of Nottingham in England for one year and at Brown University for seven years. He also spent a one-year sabbatical at the Technical University of Denmark.
The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college's 5,700 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 1,800 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology. Virginia Tech, the most comprehensive university in Virginia, is dedicated to quality, innovation, and results to the commonwealth, the nation, and the world.
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