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Scott Olson '93 Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
According to his departmental biography:
Professor Olson holds a B.S. (University of Illinois 1993), M.S. (University of Illinois 1995), and Ph.D. (University of Illinois 2001), all in civil engineering. From 1995 through 1997, Scott worked in private practice for Woodward-Clyde Consultants. After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Olson returned to private practice with URS Corporation and also taught geotechnical earthquake engineering courses at the University of Missouri-Rolla. Scott joined the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois in August 2004.
Dr. Olson currently teaches an undergraduate course in geotechnical engineering and a graduate course on insitu testing and field measurements. His research interests include: liquefaction of level and sloping ground, paleoseismology and paleoliquefaction, soft ground engineering, in situ testing, geosynthetics, and instrumentation.
He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Canadian Geotechnical Society, and the North American Geosynthetics Society. Dr. Olson previously was a member of the governor-appointed Missouri Seismic Safety Commission and currently serves on a review board for the National Highway Cooperative Research Program. Dr. Olson is a licensed professional engineer and continues to participate in consulting projects with industry.
Dr. Olson has received several honors and awards for his research, practice-related, and teaching accomplishments. In 2003, the Canadian Geotechnical Society awarded Scott the R.M. Quigley Award for the best paper in the 2002 Canadian Geotechnical Journal. In 2004, the American Society of Civil Engineers awarded Scott the Arthur Casagrande Award for his work on the residual strength of liquefied soils. The Casagrande Award was established to provide professional development opportunities for outstanding, young (under 35) practitioners, researchers, and teachers of geotechnical engineering. Dr. Olson was the first practicioner to receive this award. |
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Alan Hope '89
Head – Astrodynamics and Space Navigation section
Naval Center for Space Technology
Brother Hope has worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC since 1991. He is currently the head of the Astrodynamics and Space Navigation section at the Naval Center for Space Technology. He has been married to Thresa since 1998. They have a son, Elijah, born in 2004, and a daughter, Kiera, born in 2007 and live in Alexandria, Virginia.
"Hoper," as he is affectionately known to many in the house, is a former Archon of the Omicrom and "Psi U of the Year". On campus he was a member of Ma-Wan-Da, Sigma Gamma Tau, and Tau Beta Pi honoraries while playing sousaphone from 1985-89 in the Marching Illini. Hoper also famously starred as “Superman” during a Homecoming halftime show before the crowd at Memorial Stadium, but was killed off with “kryptonite” after the first three minutes. His brother, Tom, is a member of the '83.5 Omicron pledge class and is a distinguished scientist working on the Northwestern University faculty. |
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Dan Wojnowski Ph.D. '81.5
Principal Engineer
Engineering Systems Inc.
Brother Wojnowski is a civil and metallurgical engineer with Engineering Systems Inc. (ESI), a professional engineering consulting firm and laboratory headquartered in Aurora, Illinois. ESI is a multi-disciplinary company which provides professional engineering services to industrial, legal and insurance firms, government agencies and trade organizations, and provides consultants to other engineering firms. The laboratory capabilities are supplemented by cooperative agreements with other recognized facilities to provide a wide range of technical support capabilities, including metallurgical, materials, aeronautical, mechanical, structural, electrical, safety, automotive and audio/visual services. Projects ranging from simple failure investigations to complex engineering studies are undertaken.
With a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr. Wojnowski specializes in the areas of inspection and evaluation of distressed, failed and fire damaged structures and failure analysis of mechanical components. His structural and metallurgical background allows for an all encompassing investigation when structural materials, components and systems are involved. He is versed in the use of metals, wood, masonry and roofing materials used in the construction industry. His experience includes involvement in commercial and residential buildings, bridges, industrial plants, mobile and stationary cranes, fire suppression systems, and machinery. Prior to his association with ESI, Dr. Wojnowski was the principal engineering instructor and administrator for the engineering department at Triton College and was associated with Packer Engineering Associates, Inc. as a senior staff engineer in both the metallurgical and structural engineering departments. His professional affiliations include American Society of Civil Engineers, Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Illinois Society of Professional Engineers, National Society of Professional Engineers, Building Officials Code Association, American Society for Metals International, and the American Welding Society
Brother Wojnowski has been also honored for his work at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11 by the City of New York and the State of Illinois. You can read more about his work at Ground Zero here. |
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H. Charles "Chuck" Buchanan '65
Brother Buchanan earned a BS Degree in General Engineering and holds over 60 US patents relating to developments achieved during his engineering career which spanned 38 years beginning with GM Delco Products Division (today known as Delphi Automotive Systems, Inc.). GM sold its Wipers, Motors and Actuators Business Unit to ITT, Inc. in 1994. ITT then sold the business to Valeo, Inc. in 1998. Buchanan, who recently retired from Valeo also held the chairmanship of Valeo's Worldwide Creativity Team. He is past president of the Engineers Club and among other honors, is a 1998 recipient of the Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement for Dayton by the Engineering and Science Foundation and Affiliate Society Council of Dayton.
He is the past president of the Engineers Club of Dayton and recipient of the Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement for Dayton by the Engineering and Science Foundation and Affiliate Society Council of Dayton in 1998. In 2005 Brother Buchanan was named Managing Director of Innovation Ohio Systems, LLC, which provides Ohio's K-12 education system with a unique knowledge-based inventive problem-solving methodology called Ideation-TRIZ (I-TRIZ). IOS was recently established by Ideation International, a world leader in innovation systems with the Engineers Club of Dayton.
Information was retrieved from the IEEE page at Wright State University. |
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Richard H. "Dick" Lance Ph.D. '54
Professor Emeritus – Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Cornell University
As it notes on the Cornell site:
Brother Lance joined the Cornell faculty in 1962 after receiving his doctorate from Brown University and master's from Illinois Institute of Technology. He was a visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1968, and a Senior Scientist at the Hughes Aircraft Company at Los Angeles, in 1986 and 1989. During his tenure with Cornell's College of Engineering, Lance served as Associate Dean for Outreach, Co-Director of the Engineering Cooperative Program and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs. He also served as acting director of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. In 1994 he created and became faculty director of a study-abroad program for engineering students – in cooperation with the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH), in Hamburg, Germany. During the three years of operation of the program he served as faculty member in residence, in the second year. In 1998 Lance retired from the University and moved to Chestertown, Maryland.
In his first year of retirement Lance served as visiting professor of engineering at the TUHH, teaching basic engineering mechanics courses in English to international students in an Engineering Science degree program begun there in 1998. In Chestertown, in addition to keeping up a 1985 Chris Craft motor cruiser, he continues to be active in teaching 'active adults' in the Chestertown region, as well as undergraduates at Washington College.
In an email correspondence from September 2007, Brother Lance recounts the following about his military service:
"Drafted into the US Army in November '54 during the final weeks of the Korean War. Given basic training at Camp (now Fort) Chaffee, Arkansas and transfered to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland for reassignment as – possibly – engineer. Indeed, I did join an engineering unit, the 19th Engineering Battalion (Combat – Army) at Fort Meade, Maryland, just a stone's throw from Aberdeen. There I was trained to type and was assigned as Officers' Clerk in Battalion Headquarters, until I learned of new regulations that permitted engineering degree holders (I was BSME from Illinois in January '54) to request reassignment to positions where their training might be made use of. Transferred to Fort Knox, KY, Tank Development Unit and was discharged as a Spec 2 (Specialist Second Class) in September '56 before doing anything really useful. Total time in service: 21 months, out of an original commitment of 24 months. Greatest benefit: Korean GI Bill, which helped me to complete a PhD at Brown University in '62, in engineering mechanics." |
