Effective June 10, 2010, William (Bill) Knocke will be joining Virginia Tech's Office of the Vice President of Research as Associate Vice President for Research Programs. Knocke is the W.C. English Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“Dr. Knocke brings a wealth of experience to his role as associate vice president for research programs, including a significant contributions in university administration, teaching, research and service,” said Robert Walters, vice president for research.
A 30-year veteran of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering faculty, Knocke arrived on campus in 1979 after obtaining all three of his degrees from the University of Missouri. He quickly distinguished himself as a scholar, earning a 1984 National Science Foundation (NSF) Presidential Young Investigator Award. These Presidential awards recognize remarkable achievements by outstanding engineers, scientists and educators. Only 100 such awards were presented nationwide in 1984.
His work on the NSF award was in the areas of physical-chemical water and wastewater treatment systems, sludge handling and disposal, biological waste treatment, and heavy metal chemistry. Knocke used his NSF money to attract matching research dollars from a number of industries concerned with environmental issues.
His teaching skills also brought accolades early on. In 1987 the Virginia State Council for Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV) awarded him one of its Outstanding Faculty Awards. The competition for this award is also steep, as faculty at all of Virginia's public and private colleges and universities are eligible. At the time, Knocke was 33 and recognized as one of the youngest recipients to ever receive this award. In 1987, the average age of the competitor was 47, and Knocke had only been teaching nine years when he won this honor.
He was also one of the first of the Virginia Tech engineering faculty to teach the distance learning courses. He started in 1984 with the first CEE course offered through the Commonwealth Graduate Engineering Program (CGEP) when the technology was a microwave connection to selected cites. It was not unheard of for Knocke to reach out to more than two dozen sites in Virginia by the late 1980s, offering “live” graduate coursework through what was then the new satellite technology.
In 1994, Knocke moved to administration, first serving as the interim department head, and then securing it on a permanent basis the following year. During his tenure, significant growth occurred and by 2009, U.S. News and World Report had it ranked among the top ten civil and environmental engineering programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. The department also ranks among the top ten for the total number of bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees awarded in a given year.
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