Garry honored by national engineering society

Byron Garry, an associate professor in South Dakota State University's Department of Construction and Operations Management, was honored by the American Society for Engineering Education as the "North Midwest Section Outstanding Campus Representative, 2023." 

Garry received the award at the ASEE's national conference earlier this summer in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Garry, a 1981 (bachelor's degree in electrical engineering) and 1988 (master's degree in engineering) SDSU grad, has been a faculty member at SDSU since 1990 and a member of the ASEE since 1998.

"I've been teaching for over 33 years, and working with the students and helping them learn has been, and continues to be, the most enjoyable part of my role," Garry said. 

At SDSU, Garry has been the program lead for the electronics engineering technology program. He also teaches the "Introduction to Engineering and Technology" course, taken by approximately 350 new students each fall. 

Starting in fall 2011, Garry was SDSU's campus faculty representative for the ASEE, a role he held until last spring. 

One of the major contributions Garry has made to the engineering education field has been his organization and moderation of "best practices in engineering education" sessions. These sessions, which began in spring 2011 and continued through spring 2022, allowed faculty members in the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering ample time and space to present to their colleagues and peers research and practical classwork examples in the engineering education field. Each year, the campus representative files a report on these best practice sessions, and those reports determine who will be named the outstanding campus representative for the following academic year. 

"The North Midwest Section" includes schools from Iowa, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Minnesota, North Dakota, eastern South Dakota, Wisconsin, Manitoba and portions of Ontario.  

Garry was named the North Midwest Section and Zone III Outstanding Campus Representative in 2015.

Coming up this fall, SDSU will host the 2023 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference Oct. 4-6 on campus. The theme is "Industry-Partnered Education for Workforce Development and Career Readiness." Ekaterina Koromyslova, an associate professor in the Department of Construction and Operations Management and coordinator for the Operations Management program, will take over Garry's role as the ASEE campus representative.