Dr. James R. Mihelcic is the Samuel L. and Julia M. Flom Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the International Development Engineering Program at the University of South Florida which allows graduate students to combine interdisciplinary training with extensive international training, service, and research with the Peace Corps and nongovernmental organizations as a water/sanitation engineer (in developing world settings). He also directs a Coverdell Fellows Program for returned Peace Corps volunteers. Dr. Mihelcic also directs the National Research Center for Reinventing Aging Infrastructure for Nutrient Management (RAINmgt). His teaching and research interests are focused on advancing knowledge on how global stressors such as climate, land use, and urbanization influence water resources, water quality, water reuse, and selection and provision of water supply and sanitation technologies.
Professor Mihelcic served two terms as a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chartered Science Advisory Board (SAB) (nominated by the EPA Administrator). The SAB provides EPA with independent advice on scientific and technical issues underlying EPA policies and decision making regarding their mission to safeguard public health and the environment. In 2016 Professor Mihelcic was elected as a Fellow with the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP).
Professor Mihelcic is internationally recognized for leading efforts to integrate concepts of pollution prevention and sustainability into engineering education, engineering design, and management of water and wastewater. He is the lead author of an early journal article that made the case for a new meta-discipline of sustainability science and engineering (Environmental Science & Technology, 37(23):5314-5324, 2003) and his John Wiley environmental engineering textbook integrates a sustainability framework into engineering design and training.
Professor Mihelcic is also recognized for training engineers and conducting research in the area of global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) to better serve developing world communities and help achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. This includes creating and directing a graduate program since 1987 that allows engineering students to integrate their graduate education with extensive international training and service in the Peace Corps or nongovernmental organizations. These students have gone to work in academia, government, and engineering practice in the U.S. and also in the global WASH sector, working in international sustainable development for organizations such as USAID, UNICEF, UNHCR, Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Doctors without Borders, Norwegian Refugee Council, and other non-governmental organizations. He developed the grand challenge vision for the future of environmental engineering in the developing world (Environmental Engineering Science, 34(1):16-41, 2017). He was selected as co-editor for the Sanitation Technology chapters for the Global Water Pathogen Project (http://www.waterpathogens.org/), an update of the 1983 Feachum et al. book “Sanitation and Disease, Health Aspects of Excreta and Wastewater Management.”
He has authored over 170 published journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and peer reviewed reports. In 2016 he co-organized a national workshop for Developing Evaluation Metrics to Advance a National Water Resource Recovery Facility Test Bed Network. He is past president (and past elected member of the Board of Directors) of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) and a past member of the AEESP Foundation Board of Directors. He is a Board Certified Environmental Engineering Member and has served two terms as a Board Trustee with the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists (AAEES) and currently serves on the Academy’s Foundation Board. Professor Mihelcic is also lead author for 4 engineering textbooks: Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering (John Wiley & Sons, 1999) (translated into Spanish); Field Guide in Environmental Engineering for Development Workers: Water, Sanitation, Indoor Air (ASCE Press, 2009); and, Environmental Engineering: Fundamentals, Sustainability, Design (1st and 2nd Editions, John Wiley & Sons, 2010, 2014) (1st Edition has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese). He is an Editor for the Sanitation Technologies chapters for the Global Water Pathogen Project, a resource which serves as the updated version of “Sanitation and Disease: Health Aspects of Excreta and Wastewater Management” (Feachem et al. 1983).
Dr. Mihelcic has been awarded several teaching awards at the department level. He has received two Research Achievement Awards from the University of South Florida and their College of Engineering, a Global Achievement award from the University of South Florida, a Best Paper Award from the Environmental Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education, and the AEESP-Wiley Interscience Award for Outstanding Contributions to Environmental Engineering & Science Education. Recently he was awarded the Excellence in Environmental Engineering Education (E4) award from AAEES for significant contributions to the profession in the area of educating practitioners. He has also advised graduate students awarded the: 1) William Brewster Snow Award from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists as the best Master’s graduate student in the U.S., 2) the Montgomery-Watson-Harza Consulting Engineers - AEESP Master’s Thesis 2nd Place Award, and 3) the AAEES Wesley Eckenfelder Graduate Award for best journal paper that contributes to wastewater management. |
