Senior Lecturer Billy Wood accepts the Mechanical Engineering Student Engineering Council teaching award from Collier Miers.
The Student Engineering Council (SEC), a student organization affiliated with the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin presents annual teaching awards to a faculty member from each of its departments annually. The 2010 winner from the Department of Mechanical Engineering is Senior Lecturer Billy Wood, one of the four graphics professors teaching ME 302 and 210. The CAD drawing and drafting class is a required course for all mechanical, civil and aerospace engineering students. Mr. Wood has been teaching in the Mechanical Engineering department for 30 years, and has garnered several awards for his outstanding work.
Billy Wood and Collier Miers.
The Student Engineering Council hosted a festive awards ceremony on March 3, 2010 in the tenth floor conference room in ECJ. Council members, student nominators, Dean Fenves, the award recipients and the department chairs were all in attendance. Each winning faculty member was introduced with an appreciative speech by his or her student nominator. Billy Wood was introduced by Collier Miers, a junior in Mechanical Engineering. After the awards presentation, a tasty fajita dinner was served to everyone in attendance.
Below is the transcript from Collier Miers' speech
Professor Wood won this award because he genuinely cares about his students. I started the spring semester last year looking forward to Introduction to Engineering Design and Graphics, because honestly I was ready for a break from classes that were a never-ending cycle of equations and advanced math. I quickly found that even though this class might provide a refuge from free body diagrams and property tables, it was going to be challenging. Professor Wood took his time explaining techniques carefully and doing examples for us, but somehow I just could not make the lines that I drew on my paper look like his. He would patiently explain how I might improve my drawings and over time I came to truly enjoy and look forward to his class. He would meet with me separately from the class time and talk with me to make sure I understood the material and to ask about my other classes, to see if they were also going well. Professor Wood helped show me how to more efficiently study and cope with the difficulties and stresses that come to define engineering students' lives. That advice has been invaluable to me. I finished the semester and knew I was going to miss his class.
Professor Wood, with his characteristic smile and all around positive attitude, is a good man and an amazing professor. I know what an influence he has been in my academic career thus far, and I know he will continue to enrich the lives of everyone around him at this University. Thank you Professor Wood. Congratulations.
