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Office
of News and Information
June 6, 2005 |
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UT Tyler Hires Civil Engineering Department Chair Nelson will lead the development of the bachelor and master of science in civil engineering, as well as the civil and environmental engineering facilities and recruiting of faculty and students at UT Tyler. Nelson will also be the first faculty member to hold the endowed Brazzel Professorship in Engineering at UT Tyler. A gift of $100,000 was given in the name of Ron Brazzel, retired C.E.O. of Howe-Baker, to support the research and scholarship of an engineering faculty member. Nelson has served for the last three years as professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering at Western Michigan University. From 1998-2002, he was professor and chair of the Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University, where he was a faculty member for 13 years. He also served as program director of the Clemson University Master of Engineering Program at The Citadel. He began his academic career as an assistant professor of civil engineering at Texas A & M University in College Station. His professional background includes six years of full-time structural engineering experience in Houston, where he was primarily involved in the design of floating and fixed structures for the offshore petroleum industry with The Offshore Company and Exxon. He also worked for Brown & Root and Robert Reid Consulting Engineering. As an internationally recognized civil engineering scholar, Nelson has authored and co-authored numerous research papers and reports and three textbooks in structural engineering. He has served as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI on more than 50 funded research projects, primarily in the behavior of structural systems. Nelson serves as a technical advisor for the United States Delegation to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations treaty organization. In that capacity, he is a primary author of the international recommendation for testing free-fall lifeboats and many of the international regulations regarding the launch of free-fall lifeboats. As a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Nelson currently chairs the curriculum subcommittee of the ASCE Committee on Academic Prerequisites for Professional Practice. He is actively involved with implementing the work reported in the book, Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge for the 21 st Century, ASCE, 2004. Nelson earned his bachelor of civil engineering degree from Dayton University in Ohio, and earned his master of science and Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Houston. During his graduate study, Nelson specialized in structural engineering. He is a registered professional engineer licensed in Texas, Louisiana, California and South Carolina and is a chartered engineer in the United Kingdom.
Contact person: Lisa Buchanan, (903) 565-5769
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Dr. James Nelson has joined The University of Texas at Tyler as professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, effective May 26, Dr. Troy Henson, dean of engineering and computer sciences, announced. 