Wallace Sanders, professor emeritus in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) at Iowa State University, was honored with a 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). The award recognizes Sanders for his “passionate and compassionate advocacy for engineering education with an emphasis on steel bridge design,” as described by AISC.
Sanders taught structural engineering in CCEE at Iowa State from 1964 to 1998. He also served as associate dean for the College of Engineering during his 34-year tenure. As a professor, his research in steel bridge load distribution, strengthening and fatigue inspired state-of-the-art construction techniques throughout the American structural steel industry. Although retired, he remains active in the industry as secretary of The American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association steel bridge committee.
In April 2006, CCEE dedicated the Wallace W. and Julia B. Sanders Structural Engineering Laboratory in honor of the Sanders’. The lab has an 80-by-24-foot reaction floor equipped with 300,000-pound capacity loading points on a three-foot grid and a 15-ton overhead crane. Structural engineering research and testing is conducted here. Undergraduate students of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student organization also use this space to build their steel bridge, which is annually used to compete in the ASCE Midwest Steel Bridge Competition. Iowa State University hosts the 2013 competition March 14-16 at Hilton Coliseum.