My advisor, Dr. Ruff.

"When I was a student, I vividly remember riding my mountain bike home in the dark under big fat falling snowflakes, looong nights in the civil engineering computer lab, awesome football games at Hughes Stadium, working as a dishwasher at Ingersoll Hall, having to take civil engineering classes in the far south end of campus for no good reason, enjoying lunch on the lawn outside the Student Center, skiing in over 75% of the Colorado ski resorts and the great summers in Fort Collins.

"The professor I remember most is no question, Dr. Ruff. He was my advisor during my masters. The classes I took from Dr. Ruff were fun, captivated my attention in the subject at hand, and he made his students think beyond the obvious. He was reasonably demanding, yet so understanding. I will never forget how he offered his home phone number for us to call if we had questions at unusual hours of the day or night. On one occasion, I called him at a later hour of the night on a Sunday as a complex engineering problem was due the next morning. Dr. Ruff had a great sense of humor and it just happens that the subjects he taught were the ones I had was interested in the most."