Barrett Receives NSPE Engineering Education Excellence Award

Barrett Receives NSPE Engineering Education Excellence Award

June 23, 2008 -Steve Barrett, associate professor in the University of Wyoming Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recently named by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) as the recipient of the 2008 Engineering Education Excellence Award.

NSPE’s Professional Engineers in Higher Education and its Sustaining Universities Program established the annual award to honor an outstanding engineering educator. This national award recognizes an engineering faculty member who has demonstrated their ability to link engineering education with professional practice. The recipients must be licensed professional engineers and have a tenure-track faculty appointment in an ABET/EAC accredited engineering program at the time of application.

Barrett is a registered Professional Engineer in Wyoming and Colorado and acts as a consultant developing control hardware for U.L. approved entry access points. He has integrated discussions of licensure, practice and robust design into his coursework and is a strong advocate for professional licensure at the national level.  His areas of expertise include image processing, medical laser applications, and embedded controllers, earned a B.S. in electronic engineering technology (1979) at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He earned a master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Idaho Moscow (1986) and a Ph.D. at the University of Texas Austin (1993). He continues to excel in and out of the classroom and has been recognized as a Mortar Board Outstanding Academic Adviser. He regularly publishes articles in the engineering education literature on improving teaching and learning, and also teaches in UW's Engineering Summer Program for high school juniors.

.Barrett will travel to the NSPE Annual Conference in late July in Portland, Oregon to accept this prestigious award.  Congratulations Steve!