The Liberal Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education is pleased to present the 2004 Sterling Olmsted Award to Bruce E. Seely, Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. The award recognizes the many contributions he has made as an educator and lecturer, as a contributor to the literature, and as a promoter of the ideals of liberal education in engineering education.
Professor Seely received his education at St. Lawrence University and at the University of Delaware, where he received his Ph.D. in the history of technology in 1982. From 1981, he served as Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University for five years. Since 1986 he has been at Michigan Technological University, rising to the rank of professor in 1997, and becoming the chair of the social sciences in 2002. At Michigan Tech he has played an active role on the faculty, including serving a three year term as president of the university senate.
Nationally, Professor Seely has played an equally prominent role. He has served as secretary and newsletter editor for the Society for the History of Technology and as founding co-editor in chief of the journal Comparative Technology Transfer and Society. He was a fellow of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT in 1996. From 2000 to 2002 he served in a rotating National Science Foundation position as Program Director for Science and Technology Studies in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. During this time he championed increasing the visibility of liberal education in engineering education, culminating in his obtaining NSF support for the groundbreaking planning conference, “Liberal Studies and the Integrated Engineering Education of ABET 2000.”
Professor Seely’s numerous presentations, journal publications, and books have had a significant impact on the field of history of technology. He is the author of Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers, Temple University Press 1987, and editor of the Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography: The Iron and Steel Industry in the Twentieth Century, published in 1994. The former won the Abel Wolman Award of the Public Works Historical Society and the American Public Works Association for the book making the outstanding contribution in the field of public works history. His journal articles have won the ASEE’s William Elgin Wickenden Award, the Abbott Payson Usher Prize of the Society for the History of Technology, the Railroad History Award of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, and the Norton Prize of the Society for Industrial Archaeology.
Professor Seely serves as a model of an individual who enhances the role of liberal studies in engineering education. For his lifelong contributions to bridging the gap between the liberal arts and the professions, the Liberal Education Division is honored to celebrate him as the 2004 recipient of its highest honor, the Sterling Olmsted Award.
Respectfully submitted,
Bernard Carlson
LED Chair, 2003-04
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