Saied Mostaghimi receives Alumni Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising
Saied Mostaghimi, of Blacksburg, the H.E. and Elizabeth F. Alphin Professor and department head of Biological Systems Engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech, received the 2004 Alumni Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.
Established by the Virginia Tech Alumni Association, the award is presented each year to a faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding advisement of graduate students. The selection is made by a committee of faculty who are members of the Academy of Advising Excellence, as well as representatives from the Academy of Teaching Excellence and the Alumni Association.
Many of Mostaghimi’s students said he enriched and changed their lives. He encouraged one to get a Ph.D., which enabled him to get a job he truly loves. He helped one student interested in international development work get a consultant’s position with a USAID project in West Africa working on water-resources issues. He mentored one student through his thesis after the student took a job, and, as a result of completing that thesis, the student is now "employed by the engineering consulting firm I have always wanted to work for."
Even after becoming department head, Mostaghimi kept his advising role and even went out into the field to help students assemble equipment needed for their research. Words frequently used to describe his advising and teaching include "very approachable," "on top of the latest developments in the field," "caring and talented," "encouraging," "devoted to his students," "concerned with each student as an individual," " has great compassion and deep humility," "the sense of family mattered to him," "encouraged me to … live a balanced life," "treats people with respect," "totally focused on what we were discussing," "demanded much," "provided sound guidance," "always willing to listen," and "I consider him my guru."
Mostaghimi is a member of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, the Soil Conservation Society of America, the American Water Resources Association, the Water Environment Federation, the National Water Well Association, the Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers, the International Water Resources Association, the American Society of Engineering Education, and the American Geophysical Union. He earned a bachelor's in irrigation engineering from Pahlavi University in Iran. He earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in agricultural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He has received many awards, including the commendation award from the Soil and Water Conservation Society of America, the Gamma Sigma Delta Research Award, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers’ Engineering Achievement Young Researcher Award, and the student honor society Alpha Epsilon’s outstanding faculty member designation (twice).
Biological Systems Engineering integrates biology, chemistry, and physics with engineering to solve engineering problems associated with the environmentally sound production, processing, and utilization of renewable resources. Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, consistently ranked by the National Science Foundation among the top 10 institutions in agricultural research, offers students the opportunity to learn from some of the world’s leading agricultural scientists. The college’s comprehensive curriculum gives students a balanced education that ranges from food and fiber production to economics to human health. The college is a national leader in incorporating technology, biotechnology, computer applications, and other recent scientific advances into its teaching program.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.
