News
Cal Poly Civil & Environmental Engineering Loses One of Its Best
February 23, 2009
Dr. Ed Sullivan was known by his students and colleagues alike as an outstanding scholar, teacher and humanist. He passed away on February 16, 2009 from metastatic melanoma.
“Ed was a consummate educator who deeply cared about his students,” says CE/ENVE Chair Rakesh Goel. “Even when he was in the advanced stage of the disease, he was more worried about who is going to teach his class than his own health.”
Notes Engineering Dean Mohammad Noori, “Ed paid special attention to young people and promoted the interests of women and underserved students. His office was always a place where the new faculty, his co-workers and/or the students would turn to seek advice.”
Dr. Sullivan joined the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department in 1989, teaching transportation engineering classes emphasizing traffic analysis and modeling, evaluation methods and traffic collision modeling. But he was known far beyond Cal Poly.
He taught as a lecturer at Beijing Jiaotong University and a visiting professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. Before coming to Cal Poly, Dr. Sullivan worked as a research engineer and professor at UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies for 18 years.
Sullivan won numerous awards for his work in transportation engineering, and was also recognized by Cal Poly’s Litton Award for excellence in research and development. He was recently honored by the Transportation Research Board in Washington D.C., receiving the 2008 Frank M. Masters Transportation Engineering Award for his innovative research on road pricing.
He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a doctorate in civil engineering from UC Berkeley, and a master's in business administration from John F. Kennedy University.
“Ed's departure is indeed a tragic loss to all of us who knew him,” Noori said. “Although we have lost his physical presence, we did not lose him as a role model in our lives.”
The Ed Sullivan Memorial Scholarship Endowment
In memory of Dr. Ed Sullivan as a beloved teacher and colleague, and in recognition of his many contributions to the department and to his field, Cal Poly Civil & Environmental Engineering has established the Ed Sullivan Memorial Scholarship Endowment.
The exclusive purpose of the endowment is to provide a scholarship to benefit junior and senior students enrolled in the College of Engineering, who are pursuing their BS degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with an interest in Transportation Engineering.
Click Ed Sullivan Memorial Scholarship Endowment to provide a gift.
