Chair looks to reinvigorate dept

The Civil Engineering Department appointed professor John Stormont as department chair after he held the interim chair position for 17 months.

“It’s an honor to be selected by the faculty,” Stormont said. “For them to want to continue working with me, it’s really an honor to be selected by my peers.”

His responsibilities include financial management of department resources, including all faculty and staff. The Civil Engineering Department has five staff and 17 faculty members.

Stormont has 16 years teaching experience at UNM. Before he came to the University, he worked at Sandia National Labs for 12 years. He brought UNM $3.2 million in research grants and has been the lead adviser to 19 master’s and four Ph.D. students.

UNM School of Engi­neer­ing Interim Dean Arup Maji said in a statement that Stor­mont devel­op­ed a strate­gic plan and prepared the depart­ment for accred­i­ta­tion reviews.

“I am con­fi­dent that he will now be able to focus more on the strate­gic goals of the depart­ment, along with hir­ing new faculty,” Maji said.
Stormont said he will have to find replacements for retiring professors and ensure sustainable measures are met.

“It’s a challenge, beyond funding, a number of reframing strategies will take place,” he said. “Next year we will hire three new faculty members, and this year we will continue to implement our sustainable infrastructure, where we are trying to change how we make things last longer or have a smaller ecological footprint.”

His department includes coursework in civil engineering and undergraduate programs in construction engineering and management.

Stormont’s research inter­ests are related to geo-environmental issues asso­ci­ated with min­ing oper­a­tions and land­fills, unsaturated hydrol­ogy and geo­me­chan­ics. He is a reg­is­tered professional engi­neer in New Mex­ico and got his Ph.D. from the Univer­sity of Arizona in 1990.