Congratulations Paul Valadao on your Western District Outstanding Transportation Educator Award!

Paul Valadao was recently awarded the Western District Outstanding Transportation Educator Award. He has been selected as the recipient of this award for his numerous contributions to the research and practice of transportation engineering and his unwavering support of students both in and out of the classroom. 

As a civil engineer foremost, he strives to bring his daily work into the classroom as much as possible. His unwavering objective in the courses he teaches is to cement instructed theoretical principles with real and applicable projects.

 Professor Valadao’s commitment to his students goes beyond the classroom, as project coordinator of CE Senior Design, he works to keep the content current and relevant. As such, he organizes a project in which students have the opportunity to compare and discuss their design alternatives with the actual designs by industry civil engineers during the annual Senior Design Showcase. He believes that the traditional classroom environment can be a part of promoting solid professional practices and ethics by focusing on fundamentals, taking advantage of the diverse social environment, developing an engineering intuition, and understanding why each of these issues is important for a student’s professional development. 

“Getting the individual student to the point where they feel empowered to continuously improve themselves in all of these areas is my ultimate goal, and the reward I am continuously seeking.” - Professor Valadao

We are so incredibly lucky to have a committed professor in our department. Congratulations Professor Paul Valadao!