PULLMAN, Wash. — William Cofer, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Washington State University, has been awarded an A.D. Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship from the Boeing Co. He is one of 12 faculty members nationwide and the first WSU professor to receive it.
The fellowship allows university faculty members to spend eight weeks observing the company’s engineering work. Cofer will see different aspects of Boeing’s business in its airplane division, including work in preliminary design, the manufacturing process, flight-testing and customer service. The fellowship allows faculty members to learn about current industry practices. With the knowledge, they can reshape their undergraduate curriculum to better reflect engineering practice in industry.
Cofer received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He received his doctoral degree in 1988 from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been a WSU professor since 1988 and received the Leon Luck Award from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1992. He teaches advanced mechanics of materials, computer methods of structural analysis, finite elements, advanced finite elements and mechanics of structures. His research interests include structural mechanics and numerical methods applied to linear, nonlinear and dynamic structural analysis.
The fellowship program is named in honor of the late A.D. “Bert” Welliver, corporate senior vice president of engineering and technology at Boeing. Welliver was known throughout the aerospace industry for his promotion of a strong relationship between university and industry.
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