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Prior days' news: By date | Search This week's print issue Back issues: By date | Search April 19, 2007G.V. LoganathanMany engineering colleges have begun retooling their curricula to combat troublingly high drop-out rates and to prepare students better for jobs after graduation. G.V. Loganathan, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech who earned numerous awards for his teaching, was in the thick of those efforts. Mr. Loganathan, 50, had joined 17 colleagues at the university in a $1-million effort to improve engineering pedagogy, using the latest research about how students learn. The money came from a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation.  Virginia Tech The effort was a natural fit for Mr. Loganathan’s interest in helping students develop. In 2006 he won one of three university awards for excellence in teaching, and the College of Engineering had honored him with at least four other such honors. “He knew right away if we didn’t understand” material he was teaching, says Joseph A. Tomlinson, a senior in civil engineering. “If we didn’t, he had no problem going back and trying to get us to learn it.” Once Mr. Loganathan used characters from Star Trek to help explain a concept involving acceleration. “I’ve had few teachers work as hard as he did,” Mr. Tomlinson says. Before Thanksgiving break in November, “he told us that he hoped we had fun visiting our families, and he was going to see his family and study” course material. A native of India, Mr. Loganathan came to the United States in the late 1970s to pursue a doctorate at Purdue University. In 1982, he joined the faculty of Virginia Tech. His research specialty was hydrology and the development of environmentally sustainable water-supply systems. Outside of work, he enjoyed travel, chess, reading, and badminton. But ever the engineer, he was known for often wearing a pocket protector under a sweater vest. —Jeffrey Brainard Posted on Thursday April 19, 2007 | Permalink |Comments |
I read the profiles of all the slain. Even strangers grieve. This tragedy robs the world of some of it’s best people. Learning from this event and responding by improving detection and treatment of mental illness which is dangerous to society would give some purpose to an otherwise senseless loss of life.
My heart goes out to all the people at VT and to the families and friends of lost people.
— david blazer Apr 24, 12:43 PM #