CEE extends the department’s deep gratitude and appreciation for the contributions of two of our faculty members who are retiring at the end of May: CEE Professors Kim Hayes and Terri Olson.
We want to thank Prof. Hayes for his years of dedication to CEE. Among his many roles, Hayes served as the CEE interim chair in 2011-2012, and later the chair of our department from January 2013 through June 2017. During his long career, he also was the Program Director for Environmental and Water Resources Engineering and first came to CEE more than 30 years ago.
We want to thank Prof. Olson for her pioneering research and commitment to our profession. She led the creation of our first ABET-accredited BS Degree program in environmental engineering in 2014, which consistently ranks in the top-3 of the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. In addition to designing one of the earliest environmental engineering programs in the nation, Olson introduced new, innovative courses to the program, including CEE 460 and CEE 366. She has served as the Undergraduate Committee Chair for years and as the Associate Department Chair of Undergraduate Programs. We will certainly miss her dedication to her teaching, her students, the department, and academia.
Again, CEE expresses our deepest gratitude to Profs. Hayes and Olson for their dedication to our profession, our students, and our department. We are a better unit because of their contributions to CEE, and we will remember the positive impacts their programs and research will continue to have in the years to come. Both have requested not to have a retirement party, so everyone is encouraged to stop by to say farewell before their days here wind down. Please join us in wishing them all the best in their respective endeavors.
