Kennesaw State University’s dean of the Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, Thomas Currin, was named Georgia Engineer of the Year, an honor bestowed annually on only one of the state’s 22,000 professional engineers by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers.
 
Currin, originally nominated for the Georgia Engineer of the Year in Education award, received the highest score of all nominations submitted for various categories, earning him the top Georgia Engineer of the Year award.
 
“I'm thrilled to be selected by my engineering peers for this honor and appreciate all the support that I have received over the years from the professional engineering community in Georgia,” Currin said.
 
A leader in engineering education in the state, Currin has spent nearly three decades in higher education, becoming founding dean of the engineering college at Southern Polytechnic State University in 2006 and founding dean at Kennesaw State University in 2015.
 
A transportation engineer prior to joining higher education, Currin has served as an evaluator and commissioner of ABET, the primary accreditation agency for engineering education in the U.S., and has authored numerous engineering education articles for publications and presentations. He also holds professional engineering licenses in several states, including Massachusetts and Georgia.
 
In addition to the dean’s award, two Kennesaw State students earned the top spots for both the Engineering Student of the Year and the Engineering Technology Student of the Year. Valerie Washington, a systems and industrial engineering student, was selected as Engineering Student of the Year, while Kurt Jacobson, a mechanical engineering technology student, was named the Engineering Technology Student of the Year.
 
While the University’s engineering faculty and students have earned these awards in past years, this is the first time that three Kennesaw State recipients have received the prestigious honor at the same time.
 
The Kennesaw State recipients will be honored Feb. 13 in Atlanta during the Georgia Engineers Week Awards Gala, which is hosted by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers, in collaboration with the American Council of Engineering Companies of Georgia, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Highway Engineers, the Georgia Engineering Foundation, the Structural Engineers Association of Georgia and the Women’s Transportation Seminar.