By: Linda Fresques
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Engineering Technology Professor Kenny Stevens received the Westhafer Award recognizing his excellence in teaching during the fall 2017 New Mexico State University Convocation.
The Westhafer is presented in memory of Robert L. Westhafer, professor in the Department of Mathematics from 1946 to 1957. It is given in alternating years for excellence in teaching and for excellence in research and creative activity.
While the Westhafer Award is one of NMSU’s most prestigious, it is one of many NMSU and the College of Engineering awards recognizing Stevens.
In 2016, Stevens received the NMSU Faculty Globalization Award recognizing those who have made contributions to the internationalization of the NMSU campus. He was recognized by the College of Engineering in 2013 with a Foreman Faculty Excellence Award. In 2003, he received Teacher of the Year in the Department of Engineering Technology and Surveying Engineering and in 2000, he received the NMSU Roush Award for Teaching Excellence.
Stevens serves as the Civil Engineering Technology Program coordinator and adviser to the Aggies Without Limits (AWL) group. In the past he was adviser to the American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe and the Associated Schools of Construction Bidding contest teams.
A former Peace Corps volunteer, Stevens’ passion for service to others is the mission of AWL which he founded with the help of a former student Dorothy Lanphere in the mid-2000s. The group has since performed service projects in foreign countries and locally each year. The group recently returned from Nicaragua where they built a foot bridge spanning 110 feet over a river.
“To say that Kenny has deeply impacted the lives of our students, and his colleagues, in the most positive manner is an understatement of his influence. Remarks from students often say how much he has changed their lives in the most positive ways. The opportunity presented by this award is a well-deserved recognition of Professor Stevens’s unrelenting dedication to his humanity, his profession, the constituencies he serves, and the benefits that his qualities bestow on all the students he has influenced and lives he has touched,” said Thomas Jenkins, Engineering Technology and Surveying Engineering Department head.
