College of Engineering News Room

Autar Kaw Receives Ralph Coats Roe Award

Autar Kaw, a mechanical engineering professor, received the 2017-18 Ralph Coats Roe Award from the Mechanical Engineering Division of the American Society of Engineering Education. Kaw accepted the award at the 125th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 25, 2018. He also gave an acceptance speech titled "Journey of an Open CourseWare" to promote open-access course materials, universal design for learning, and the ensuing relationship to equal access to higher education for students from low socioeconomic groups.

The award "recognizes a mechanical engineering educator who is an outstanding teacher and who has made the notable professional contributions. The award is sponsored by the Mechanical Engineering Division of ASEE and consists of a $10,000 honorarium, a plaque and travel expense reimbursement for attendance at the ASEE Annual Conference. The award is funded by an endowment provided by Burns and Roe, Inc."

Kaw joined USF in 1987 and has been at the forefront of engineering education in developing open courseware and MOOCs, incorporating personally developed interactive educational software, making textbooks affordable, using social media for dissemination of content and awareness of higher education challenges, and implementing engineering education research methods to evaluate the cognitive and affective effects of teaching methods such as blended, flipped and adaptive learning.

Funded by National Science Foundation (2002-18), under Professor Kaw's leadership, he and his colleagues from around the nation have developed, implemented, refined and assessed online resources for an open courseware in Numerical Methods. This courseware annually receives 1,000,000+ page views, 1,800,000+ views of the YouTube lectures and 100,000+ annual visitors to the Numerical Methods Guy blog.

Kaw has received several other national, regional and university awards including the 2012 U.S. Professor of the Year Award, the 2011 ASEE National Teaching Award, the 2004 ASME Curriculum Innovation Award, and the 1991 SAE Ralph-Teetor Award.

In addition to teaching and conducting research in the field of engineering education, Kaw has written four textbooks, published more than 100 technical papers in areas such as mechanics of composite materials, bridge design, thermal stresses and sports analytics. He is a co-patentee on special body armor.