Dr. Deborah Goodings Honored With Clark School's "Outstanding Service" Award

Dr. Deborah Goodings was honored with the Clark School "Outstanding Service" award recently. Dr. Goodings has a long history of service to the Department and the College, most recently as Associate Chairman of the Department from 2001 to 2003, as Chairman of the Engineering Council through AY2002/2003, as advisor to Civil Engineering students who required special advising for curricular or personal reasons from 2001 to 2003, and now as undergraduate advisor to half of our juniors and seniors.

The fact that the student members of the University’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders took the lead in the nomination of Dr. Goodings, speaks volumes in it self about the impact of her service to the college. Dr. Goodings identified an EWB project in the design phase and joined our chapter to it. She used the funding provided to travel with five engineering undergraduates to northern Thailand for two weeks in June, 2004, where they refined the design for and then constructed a simple wastewater treatment system, as well as working on interior finishing, for a health clinic to serve a cluster of Lisu hill tribe villages.

Since then, Dr. Goodings has overseen the development of four new EWB-UMCP projects: one on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; one to Patadel, Ecuador; one to return to northern Thailand to build an orphanage for children who have escaped to Thailand from Burma, but without their parents; and a new project under development to construct a clinic in a poor district of Cairo.

In addition to the time Dr. Goodings spends on these projects, she has made impressive connections to our community of local engineering practitioners. The measure of the leadership she has provided to our students is in the effect she has already been seen to have on senior students’ graduate study and career choices.

Published July 31, 2005