When it comes to leadership, Bill Higginbotham, CE 76, has learned many valuable lessons from the 13 businesses he’s founded over the course of his long and successful career. Actually, that number only includes his “real” businesses—in geotechnical consulting, energy and environmental management, construction, venture capital and more. But Higginbotham is a natural entrepreneur who has started businesses over the course of his life doing everything from cleaning pools to landscaping to buying and selling vintage sports cars.
The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is ending 2019 on a high note, having doubled its endowed faculty chairs and professorships over the past year, thanks to the Messner Faculty Challenge Grant.
At its November meeting, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia elected Sachin Shailendra, a civil engineering alumnus from Georgia Tech, to serve as its chair for the coming year.
In three decades of leadership, John Huff, CE 68, has helped Oceaneering International Inc. become the premier organization in underwater technologies. He grew the business from a small diving company to a highly successful corporation with pioneering technologies that have been used to explore deep ocean basins and outer space. He has achieved a lot in the business world, and he says that understanding people is a key to leadership and success.
Alumni Dwight Evans and Charles “Wick” Moorman still remember the professors who taught them the fundamentals of civil engineering. Now they’re both establishing new endowed professorships in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering to ensure the very best faculty continue to inspire the next generation of students in the School.
A melting pot of experts with research interests as diverse as geotechnical engineering, termite burrowing, tree physiology, granular physics and soft robotics trickled in from around the world in late May for the First International Workshop on Bio-Inspired Geotechnics. The NSF-funded workshop brought together 60 experts from engineering and science research, as well as industry, to foster dialogue and collaborations to better establish the field of bio-inspired geotechnics.
Andrea Hence Evans finished her bachelor’s degree in 1999 and now runs her own intellectual property law firm outside Washington, D.C. In that sense, she’s an entrepreneur. But she also spends all of her time helping entrepreneurs and other businesses protect their ideas.
G. Ben Turnipseed has joined the Georgia Tech Engineering Hall of Fame, an honor reserved for alumni who have reached the highest levels of professional achievement.
For William E. “Bill” Higginbotham, BCE 1976, it was a no-brainer. The opportunity to endow a professorship in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering "at half price" was to good a bargain.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278
