Mechanical Engineering Professors Charles Dalton and Lewis Wheeler will be honored this week by the South Texas Section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Professor Dalton will receive the 2002 Dean W.R. Woolrich Award, recognizing him as the South Texas Section Engineer of the Year. Wheeler, interim chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineer, will be named the 2002 Dean Claude L. Wilson Award for lifetime achievements of an outstanding Engineering Educator.
The awards will be presented at the organization's Honors and Awards Banquet Thursday, April 18, at the Westchase Hilton Hotel. The South Texas Section of the ASME is the largest section in the United States.
"It's an honor to be recognized with this award," says Dalton, who has been heavily involved with the section's Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering group and has served as an associate editor of The ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering and the Journal of Fluids and Structures. He also served on the executive committee and as chairman of the ASME Fluids Engineering Division.
Other UH faculty members who have previously won the Woolrich award include Larry Witte, associate dean for undergraduate programs, and John Lienhard, M.D. Anderson Professor of Mechanical Engineering and History, and creator of the popular radio program, Engines of Our Ingenuity. Dalton and Stanley Kleis, associate professor of mechanical engineering, are previous winners of the Wilson award.
Dalton, formerly associate dean of the Cullen College of Engineering and a fellow of ASME, is also a UH alumnus, graduating with a B.S. in 1960 and an M.S. in 1963, both in mechanical engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1965.
Wheeler is currently completing his second five-year term as the technical editor of the ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics, one the two largest ASME journals. He too is a fellow of the ASME and graduated from UH with both bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering before receiving his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.
UH Mechanical Engineering Professor Richard Bannerot nominated both faculty members for their respective awards.