Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

FACULTY NEWS
Numerous successes
Accolades abound for teacher and scholar
Michael C.
Vorster
More than 20 years ago, Michael
C. Vorster was recruited to Virginia
Tech to create and direct
the Via Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering’s (CEE) undergraduate
and graduate programs in construction
engineering and management
(CEM). During his 23-year tenure, he was
instrumental in a number of the program’s
successes.
As one example, members of the
Vecellio family donated $1 million to the
CEM program, and it was subsequently
named in their honor. Then, in 2005, CEE
alumnus A. Ross Myers and his longtime
friend and fellow classmate from the early
1970s, John Lawson, each gave $5 million
to start the Myers-Lawson School of
Construction.
In 1998, Vorster was awarded the David
H. Burroughs Professorship, recognizing
his eminent teaching and sustained
and distinguished scholarship. Burroughs,
a 1942 Virginia Tech engineering graduate,
was president of the Virginia Road
Builders Association in 1962, and spent
two years as chair of the Virginia Registration
Board of Contractors.
Accolades for Vorster’s successes
12 | VIA REPORT | 2009
abound. One comes from G. Wayne
Clough who currently heads the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D.C., and
who was Dean of Virginia Tech’s College
of Engineering from 1990-93. He credited
Vorster with building “…the Virginia Tech
construction program into one of the best
in the U.S.”
At the end of the fall 2009 semester,
Vorster will retire from Virginia Tech, but
he does plan to remain a very active consultant
from his Blacksburg, Va., home
that he shares with his wife Merle.
Vorster is recognized as an international
expert in the CEM field, with specific
emphasis on applications of engineering
economics to construction machinery. He
has personally directed or co-directed
externally funded research grants and
contracts totaling more than $5 million,
with such funding providing the means
for Vorster to support numerous graduate
students.
One of these former students, Govi
Kannan who earned his doctorate while
working with Vorster, had mixed emotions
regarding his adviser’s retirement. He
wrote in an email, “On one side there is
sadness on behalf of scores of students
who are going to be deprived of not being
a student of Dr. Vorster’s. They will read
about your work but not have indulgence
of your simple and tasteful communication
and personal charm. They will not get
to hear the stories that instill confidence
and credibility. On the other side, there is
a sense of relief … (for you).”
Another former student and now an assistant
professor of construction management
at the University of North Carolina
at Charlotte, John Hildreth, wrote, “Mike
is noted for his work regarding construction
equipment, but to his students he is
also renowned for his work in the classroom.
He teaches beyond construction
engineering and management to topics
he knows equally well, such as passion,
curiosity, and dignity. Fortunate are those
of us who have known him.”
In addition to the students’ overwhelming
support for Vorster, he also had outstanding
relationships with construction
industries. One reason was an initiative
he is particularly proud of — his founding
of the Construction Mentoring Program
in 1990 in partnership with the Virginia
Department of Transportation (VDOT).
See Vorster, page 14