WSU Emeritus Society bestows first award

Nearly a quarter century after receiving the first Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Public Service, Thomas M. Maloney has been awarded the first ever WSU Emeritus Society Excellence Award.

Maloney, who began at WSU as an undergraduate in the 1950s, went on to head WSU’s Wood Materials and Engineering Laboratory during a time of unprecedented innovation in the wood products industry, much of it spurred by WSU research.

“We became the place to go to find things out,” he said recently. Maloney has written a 56-page booklet on the history of WSU’s Wood Materials and Engineering Laboratory, which is condensed from a 600-plus page detailed look at the innovations and discoveries achieved by the wood lab.

Maloney began directing composite research in 1958 and became head of the new Wood Technology Section in 1972. When the woods laboratory was made a separate entity in 1985, he became its first director and held the position until his retirement in 1995.

“Tom Maloney had an incredible impact on wood products R&D worldwide,” said Donald Bender, director of the Wood Materials and Engineering Lab since 1997.  “Tom loves WSU and he
certainly has left an impressive legacy.”