Dr. Edwin P. Foster, Professor of Civil Engineering at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, received the Peter G. Hoadley Award for Outstanding Engineering Educator at the annual meeting of the Tennessee Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Dr. Edwin FosterFoster has published more than fifty publications in five countries on the subject of engineering education and the design of cable structures. He was the president of the TN-Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1995 and was the UT-Chattanooga ASCE student chapter faculty advisor for twenty-seven years.
Foster arrived at UT-Chattanooga in 1979 when the engineering program was small, but growing. By 1981, Foster had successfully launched the Civil/Structural Engineering Concentration in the Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) degree.
“The program then had only the structural part of civil engineering and now we have a full civil program with four areas; structural, transportation, geotechnical and environmental,” Foster said. “We now have over a hundred majors in the new and expanded Civil Engineering program that was accredited as a separate Civil Engineering program last year. I have really enjoyed watching these young men and women come through the program and then go on to become really outstanding and creative engineers.”
A Chattanooga landmark also benefited from Foster’s expertise when Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers from Paramus, New Jersey, requested load testing before the restoration of the Walnut Street Bridge could begin. After working closely with Dr. Gary McDonald, the colleagues found a way to use the latest innovation in gages with the University’s older electronic equipment.
“Dr. Gary McDonald, Karl Fletcher, a few engineering graduate students and I were involved in load testing the bridge. Garnet Chapin was the architect for the restoration and was present for the load testing. We would clamp a few gages to the steel members and then drive a dump truck fully loaded with rock over the bridge. The strain on the steel or iron was measured as the truck slowly passed that section. Our gages could measure a 0.000001 inch stretch on a member. After recording the strain on many members that day a successful load testing was completed. In my office the following week I calculated the force in each member that we had tested and determined that the bridge was carrying the load exactly as it should. With that information Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers were able to proceed with the restoration plans,” Foster said.
The Peter G. Hoadley Award for Outstanding Engineering Educator holds special significance for Foster because Hoadley was Foster’s professor at Vanderbilt University.
“He not only impressed me with his knowledge of the subject but how he taught his classes and treated the students. He was also very much involved in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and was a key figure in passing that professionalism on to his students,” Foster said.
When Hoadley offered Foster a fellowship to cover tuition, books and living expenses as he pursued his master’s degree, Foster eagerly accepted.
“You see, his classes were so demanding that I had not been able to afford any time to look for a job after graduation. If that afternoon had not happened then my teaching career would never have happened. In my forty-one years of teaching for the University of Tennessee there have been times that I needed to make a difficult decision and did not know which way to go. At those times I just said to myself, “What would Dr. Hoadley do?” and then the answer became obvious,” Foster said.
Foster resides in Hixson with his wife of 42 years, Joyce. The couple has three grown children and eight grandchildren.
