2026 Dean’s Award for Excellence

Congratulations to the faculty of Virginia Tech Engineering being honored with a 2026 Dean’s Award for Excellence.

Virginia Tech is celebrated in the commonwealth and throughout the nation for the excellence of our programs in engineering education, research, and public service. The Dean's Awards for Excellence recognize our faculty members' incredible work, which has directly or indirectly impacted the success of our students.

Among this year’s award winners were aerospace and ocean engineering faculty members Nanya Intaratep, Todd Lowe, and Shane Ross. Winners across the College of Engineering were recognized by interim Dean David Knight in early May.

Excellence in Outreach:  Nanyaporn (Nanya) Intaratep 

Intaratep is a long-term and stalwart supporter of the Center for Engineering Excellence and Diversity (CEED) and its local school visits and summer programs. Tours of the Stability Wind Tunnel for these programs can reach around 750 students annually and lead to a high public visibility of the facility and its contemporary technical activity. 

She has strategically used her role as faculty lead for our Wind Turbine Team (WTT) and its participation in the DOE Collegiate Wind Competition to collaborate with nearby universities (James Madison, Johns Hopkins), multiple General Electric industrial sites, and the Radford City Public Schools to provide awareness and a conduit of interest to the College. 

As part of a large-scale, multi-university research program supported by a NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) grant, Intaratep initiated the idea for a weeklong camp for undergraduate students to explore the emergent paradigms for drones and advanced aerial mobility. 

And within the department, Intaratep is subcommittee chair of the AOE Outreach and Education Committee, which among other important actions integrates student groups from across the College and University to visit and appreciate the several research laboratories across campus. 

W.S. “Pete” White Innovation in Engineering Education Award: Todd Lowe and David Gray

The W.S. “Pete” White Award honors faculty who excel in the development of instructional approaches that incorporate both technological and pedagogical innovation. The ideal candidates are faculty members who have been instrumental in developing a new type of program that has strong potential as a model across many technical specialties. 

Lowe and Gray launched the “English-to-Engineering” (E2E) undergraduate program in collaboration with Pratt & Whitney in 2022. The E2E name stems from the focus on developing skills for translating everyday English into engineering objectives or approaches. 

The E2E program aims to expose diverse groups of students at all levels of undergraduate study to contemporary issues in industry, while supporting the students’ development of industry-relevant communication skills, as well as skills for research and technical project execution. It fills an important gap in the undergraduate engineering educational experience by approaching the need for experiential learning in a structured way, providing multi-year, spiraling support so that students can develop and execute projects that require strategic vision and understanding of broader technology needs. 

In addition to their research projects, students are provided with guest lectures from industry, workshops, site visits to Pratt & Whitney testing facilities.

The E2E program is a mix of experiential student directed learning, integration of education and research, and intensive industrial involvement and sponsorship, and is a program that can be replicated across many technical areas. 

Certificate of Teaching Excellence: Shane Ross

The Certificates of Teaching Excellence are awarded annually by the university to 21 faculty members, selected by the individual colleges, proportionate to the number of instructional faculty positions allotted to each college.  Teaching excellence is recognized through evidence of effective student learning, exemplary curriculum design, professional development, and impact beyond Virginia Tech. Ross was also recognized for this honor in 2022.