The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering recognized two faculty members with awards at its student-faculty banquet on April 17 at Tallahassee’s Sittig Center. Those awards went to Kamal Tawfiq, in recognition of his service as department chair and to Jerry Wekezer for lifetime contributions to the department.
Kamal Tawfiq, Ph.D., PE joined the department in 1988 and was selected as chair in 2004 following an external search. As chair, he led the department successfully through three ABET accreditation visits, two Quality Enhancement Reviews and two SACS accreditation cycles. He was the first chair to initiate and implement online distance learning courses in the college and to establish the first MEng at the MS level. Tawfiq was instrumental in developing exchange programs for students from China, Germany and Africa. As chair, he served under five deans/interim deans and navigated the department safely through numerous challenges, often while teaching a standard course load, conducting externally funded research projects and participating in numerous service activities.
In 2007, Tawfiq was elected to the grade of Fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers and he received the Dean’s Engineering Invention Award the same year. In 2014, he received the FSU Distance Learning Award for Excellence in Online Course Design. Tawfiq was recognized twice (2007, 2013) as the Engineering Faculty of the Year by the Florida Engineering Society.
Jerry Wekezer, Ph.D., PE joined the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering in 1994 as department chair after serving as head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Alaska Anchorage for four years. During his 10-year tenure as chair, the department launched the highly successfully B.S. program at FSU’s Panama City campus and began the Ph.D. program at the FAMU-FSU campus in Tallahassee.
Wekezer’s research interests include simulation-based engineering science and applied computational mechanics. His work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, Florida Department of transportation and U.S. Army Research Laboratory, among other federal and state agencies and organizations. In 1999, he began a longstanding research program examining the crashworthiness of paratransit buses. Using computational techniques based on dynamic finite element analysis, along with laboratory tests of individual components and full-scale crash tests, his team has worked with the Florida Department of Transportation to test various types of paratransit buses for their ability to survive a side impact and rollover accidents with minimal harm to occupants. Wekezer’s work has been instrumental in developing and validating national and international standards for crash safety assessment of small buses.
As Professor Emeritus, Wekezer continues to work in this important field in concert with Dr. Sungmoon Jung and research operations manager Jeffrey Siervogel.
Wekezer is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 2007, he was recognized for his achievements as a Distinguished University Professor. An ASCE Fellow and a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, Wekezer received the Engineering Service Award in 2004 and the Engineering Teaching Award from FAMU-FSU Engineering in 2008. He was awarded the title of University Distinguished Professor at Florida A&M University in 2002.