Randy Beard as Electrical & Computer Engineering Chair; Grant Schultz as Civil & Construction Engineering Chair
The Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering recently announced the appointment of Dr. Randal W. Beard and Dr. Grant G. Schultz as Department Chairs of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Civil & Construction Engineering respecitvely. Their terms are effective July 1, 2024.
Beard replaces Dr. Aaron Hawkins, who has been serving since 2018 as Department Chair and since 2012 as Associate Department Chair. Schultz replaces Dr. Norman L. Jones, who has been serving as Department Chair since 2018.
To choose a department chair, the dean and associate deans interview the faculty to receive recommendations for who to select.
Dr. Randy Beard joined the BYU faculty in 1996. His research focus includes unmanned air vehicles, nonlinear control, and multiple vehicle coordination and control. Dr. Beard is a distinguished presenter and lecturer worldwide, having presented multiple times at the IEEE Conference. He has several patents and is the co-founder of the Center of Excellence for Small Unmanned Air Vehicles and Procerus Technologies; he is also the BYU Site Director of the NSF I/UCRC Center for Unmanned Air Systems.
He earned a B.S. (Magna Cum Laude) in Electrical Engineering at the University of Utah along with an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, an M.S. in Mathematics, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute. He is credited as an author of four books and has a Google Scholar index of 61 with 35,704 citations.
Dr. Beard is the recipient of numerous awards including the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, Elected Fellow of AIAA, Elected Fellow of IEEE, Thomson Scientific Essential Science Indicators Fast Breaking Paper, and Steven V. White University Professorship.
Dr. Grant Schultz has been Associate Department Chair since 2022, having joined the BYU faculty in 2004. He is registered as a Professional Engineer and Professional Traffic Operations Engineer; he has mentored many winning students at the Institute of Transportation Engineers Mountain District Conference. His research interests are transportation safety and traffic operations.
He earned a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering at Brigham Young University followed by a PhD of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University. Dr. Schultz is is credited in over 160 academic publications.
Dr. Schultz is the recipient of numerous awards including the UTRAC Trailblazer Award, Engineering Educator of the Year, Endowed Young Faculty Award, Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Transportation Educator Award, and a Fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers since 2010.
Read more about Dr. Randy Beard here.
Read more about Dr. Grant Schultz here.