Civil and environmental engineering Professor Tracy Thatcher was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the West Coast Section of the Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA).
Congratulations on receiving this prestigious award! Tell us more about the Distinguished Service Award.
I was nominated for the Distinguished Service Award by members of the West Coast Section of A&WMA. The award recognizes my service as the A&WMA student chapter (SENVE) faculty adviser for the past 20 years. Over that time, the club has grown in membership, added important services such as peer mentoring and community service, and won the A&WMA student competition, Environmental Challenge International (ECi), five of the last nine years and placed second and third in the two other years.
What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part is working as an adviser to student competition teams. In addition to being faculty adviser for the ECi competition team, I have also advised student teams for the WERC Environmental Design Contest. In the last 20 years, I have worked with more than 200 students on this competition, where they design solutions to emerging environmental issues, from removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to restoring wildlands after fire to measuring microplastics in lakes.
Thatcher has been teaching at Cal Poly since 2005.
By Taylor Villanueva
