Bulleit Named Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor William M. Bulleit has accepted a three-year appointment as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, effective July 1.

He came to Michigan Tech in 1981 as an assistant professor and served as associate chair of the civil and environmental engineering department from 1998 to 2004. He was instrumental in developing curricula to accompany the change from quarters to semesters and has been active in a wide range of University activities, including serving as a member of the University Senate from 1989 to 1995.

"Bill has an excellent record of accomplishment at Michigan Tech, and I am confident that he will be a fantastic leader for the department, college and University," said Dean of Engineering Tim Schulz. "I look forward to working with Bill and all of the faculty and staff of the department to develop and sustain an environment of high intellectual achievement and distinctive scholarly production.

"I would also like to thank Neil Hutzler for his many years of leadership and service to the department as chair, to the college as associate dean, and to the University as a talented educator."

Bulleit received his BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from Purdue University. He then worked for Perry Oceanographics Inc. in Riveria Beach, Fla., designing manned and unmanned submersibles. He later received his PhD in Engineering Science from Washington State University and joined HNTB in Bellevue, Wash., designing bridges and working on the design of a large-diameter, soft-earth tunnel, before coming to Michigan Tech.

Bulleit received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1986 in the assistant professor/lecturer category and was a finalist for the award in the associate professor/professor category in 1996 and 1997. He teaches structural engineering, and his research areas include the reliability of wood members and wood structural systems, the design of traditional timber frame structures, the reliability of pre-stressed concrete structures, and the development of structural design code criteria. He has published over 70 technical papers and is the co-author with Professor Sheryl Sorby of the textbook "An Engineer’s Guide to Technical Communication," published in 2006 and subsequently translated into Dutch.

A member of the American Society of Civil Engineers since 1982, he has been an associate editor of the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and served on the editorial board of the ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering. He is active on the ASCE Committee on Wood, particularly in efforts to incorporate structural reliability concepts into wood structural design codes. He also was the editor of an ASCE-published book, "Classic Wood Structures."

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