Davidson Selected as Recipient of Ryan Award

Cliff Davidson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy, is the recipient of the William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching for 2009. This award is given annually to a full-time faculty member at Carnegie Mellon who has demonstrated unusual devotion and effectiveness in teaching undergraduate or graduate students.

Cliff has been with Carnegie Mellon since 1977 and during that time has taught courses at all levels, notably Air Quality Engineering, a senior/graduate student course in CEE and EPP. Beginning in 2002, he taught a new course on Sustainable Engineering that emphasized the environmental effects of engineering decisions. This course was eventually expanded to become four half-semester courses on sustainability.

Another of his accomplishments is the creation and teaching of a seminar series, "Preparing for a Faculty Career", begun in 1986 when a group of graduate students approached the CEE department head about starting a seminar program on the topic. Cliff worked with Susan Ambrose, Associate Provost for Education and Director of the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, to develop the program which has continued uninterrupted for the past 20 years. Susan and Cliff assembled their notes on the collected wisdom of Carnegie Mellon faculty participants at these seminars and published the first book on the topic of developing the knowledge and skills to become a faculty member in education and science, entitled The New Professor's Handbook. This book is now in its fourth printing and is widely used around the country. Congratulations, Cliff!