Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

FACULTY NEWS
Outstanding leadership
Knocke credited by colleagues, alumni, and staff;
plans to restart environmental research program
In the Charles E. Via Report, William
R. Knocke, W.C. English Chaired Professor
and head of the Charles E. Via,
Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering (CEE) at Virginia Tech from
1995 until the summer of 2009, needs no
introduction.
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.
Accolades for his abilities abound. Veteran
CEE Emeritus Professor and National
Academy of Engineering (NAE) member,
James Mitchell, said that in his “51 years
in academia, both at the University of California,
Berkeley and here at Virginia Tech,
Bill Knocke stands right at the top among
department chairs and heads that I have
worked with when it comes to his overall
commitment, dedication, and service
across the full range of activities that make
the job so demanding and important both
within and outside the university,”
Mitchell added that Knocke’s abilities
“to look ahead, discern and evaluate the
needs of the department, and then institute
those activities required to address them,
find the necessary resources, develop a
plan, and carry it out have enabled CEE at
Virginia Tech to grow and to enjoy a leadership
position among comparable departments
across the country.”
Another senior emeritus member of
the department, J. Michael Duncan, also
a member of the NAE, credited Knocke
with ”guiding the department to its top-ten
ranking nationally through his leadership,
See Knocke, page 36
2009 | | VIA REPORT | | 13