Russ College names 2024 faculty and staff awardees

The Russ College of Engineering and Technology hosted its annual Spring Awards Celebration honoring faculty and staff members on Friday, April 12. The college’s Board of Visitors, Engineering Student Ambassadors and faculty and staff were in attendance as Patrick Fox, dean of the college, named the recipients of the excellence awards.

The winners for the outstanding technical, administrative, and classified employee awards were:

• Outstanding Technical Employee: Joey Boyle, College Technician
• Outstanding Administrative Employee: Becky Maccombs, Director of Finance
• Outstanding Classified Employee: Brenda Sinclair, Administrative Specialist

Fox continued the celebration with the White Research and Teaching Awards, which were generously established by Marvin and Ann White in 1998. Each department selects two outstanding faculty members based on its own criteria, one for excellence in teaching and one for excellence in research.

The winners of the 2024 White Teaching Awards are:

• George Armann, Aviation
• Kevin Crist, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Deb McAvoy, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Shawn Ostermann, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Tom Chambers, Engineering Technology and Management
• Omar Alhawari, Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Sean Jenson, Mechanical Engineering

The winners of the 2024 White Research Awards are:

• Tingyue Gu, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Sam Khoury, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Chris Bartone, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Neil Littell, Engineering Technology and Management
• Felipe Aros-Vera, Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Yahya Al-Majali, Mechanical Engineering

In 1981, Fritz Russ, BSEE ’42, HON ’75, and his wife, Dolores, generously established an endowment to support two additional awards, for research and teaching, to be presented annually at the Spring Award Celebration. Since that time, a new instructional faculty teaching award has been created as well. The following faculty members were recognized with these special awards:

• Tingyue Gu, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, received the 2024 Russ Outstanding Research Paper Award recipient, for his paper entitled, “X80 U-bend Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) Crack Tip Dissolution by Fast Corroding Desulfovibrio Ferrophilus IS5 Biofilm” 
• Neil Littell, Engineering Technology and Management, received the 2024 Russ Outstanding Undergraduate Tenure-Track Faculty Teaching Award
• Daniel Sheets, Engineering Technology and Management, received the 2024 Russ Outstanding Undergraduate Instructional Faculty Teaching Award

The evening concluded with dessert and refreshments.