The IEEE Florida Council (comprised of all 12 Florida Sections, representing 9,500 IEEE members) has announced that Dr. Ralph Fehr, long time member of our Florida West Coast Section, has been awarded the prestigious 2009 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award! Our Chair, Jim Anderson, presented the award plaque at the January FWCS EXCOM meeting.

Ralph is an outstanding engineer with experience in many aspects of electric utility distribution, substation, and transmission engineering. He is a professor at the USF College of Engineering, Electrical Engineering Department, where he focuses on teaching power-engineering courses. His past careers included many years at Florida Power Corp and Tampa Electric Company.

Ralph was honored for keeping alive and expanding a vibrant, relative power engineering program at USF even during periods of changing administrations and economic downturns. He also founded and is a faculty advisor to X-Labs, which is a very motivated student interest group, which promotes engineering and the sciences by designing, building and conducting high visibility demonstrations and experiments.

Ralph has been a long-time IEEE volunteer since 1992, serving on many committees and supporting several PES General Meetings and conferences! He is co-advisor to the USF IEEE Student Branch. Let us all congratulate Ralph for his accomplishments and this award. He truly deserves this honor.

Byline: Richard Beatie, P.E., Chair Awards & Recognition Committee