Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science Education (E4S)

The E4S Award will be granted to an educator who has made a significant contribution to the profession in the area of educating practitioners. The award will be jointly administered by AAEES and AEESP and will be bestowed annually at the AAEES Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science™ (E3S) Awards Luncheon and Technical Conference. A monetary award of $1,000 with an additional $500 for travel by the award recipient to the annual E3S ceremony will be granted to the winning nominee.

Examples of significant contributions include:

• Development of educational material or text that enhances the ability of students to succeed as professional environmental engineers serving as practitioners in roles such as infrastructure design and project leadership.
• Demonstration of successful course or curricula development aimed at educating practitioners. Successful deployment of the Environmental Engineering Body of Knowledge concepts.
• Creation of unique methods or curricula that challenge and inspire students in the area of environmental engineering practice.
• Demonstration of successful student educational outcomes (examples include: letters of support/nomination from former students currently practicing environmental engineering, former students passing PE, former students showing leadership as practitioners, critical projects that former students have led).
• Establishment of positive student mentoring relationships or programs.
• Contributions to the profession in terms of activity in professional organizations, delivery of lectures, and interaction with public agencies and the consulting community to bridge the gap between university education and environmental engineering practice.
• Open to all university faculty teaching environmental engineering.

Nomination packages should include: (1) a brief cover letter from the nominator; (2) brief curriculum vitae (4-page maximum) for the nominee, (3) documentation related directly to the award criteria consisting of no more than 30 pages, (4) one (minimum) to five (maximum) letters of recommendation from current or past students; and (5) one (minimum) to three (maximum) letters of recommendation from faculty, administrator, or industry peers. Past nominations will be carried over and considered for three years and can be modified during the current nomination period.

Information on where to submit a nomination package can be found here: https://aeespfoundation.org/awards/e4.

2024 Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science Education Recipient

Benito Mariñas, Ph.D.

Dr. Mariñas is Ivan Racheff Endowed Professor of Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where he served as Department Head from 2014-2020.  He also served as Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems - WaterCAMPWS (2012-14).  Dr. Mariñas teaches graduate and undergraduate courses covering fundamental, laboratory experimentation, and design aspects of environmental engineering and science.  His research explores mechanistic aspects of disinfection processes, and nitrogenous disinfection by-product formation, and the development of novel membrane materials for the control of water-borne pathogens and chemical contaminants.  

Dr. Mariñas holds a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain (1982); and M.S. (1985) and Ph.D. (1989) degrees in sanitary and environmental engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.  Before joining UIUC in 1995, he was a faculty member (1989-1995) at the School of Civil Engineering of Purdue University, West Lafayette.  

Dr. Mariñas was the recipient of the Arthur and Virginia Nauman Faculty Scholar award (1998-2005) at UIUC.  His other honors include Fellow of the AEESP (2020), Member of the Academy of Distinguished Alumni Academy, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Berkeley (2019), Harold Munson Outstanding Teacher Award (1992) and Ross Judson Buck '07 Outstanding Counselor Award (1992) from the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University.  He also appeared in the UIUC List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students multiple times.

Thank you to ABET for sponsoring the 2024 Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science Education Award.  

Past Recipients