Kevin G. Sutterer, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
A geotechnical engineer by training, Sutterer spent six years in engineering practice before beginning his academic career and has continued to contribute to professional practice through occasional work as an expert witness. He joined the University of Kentucky faculty in 1993 and Rose-Hulman in 1998, where he served as head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2009 to 2021.
Throughout more than three decades as an educator, Sutterer has worked to bring professional practice into the classroom. He has taught broadly across the civil engineering curriculum and has been a longtime advocate for project- and case-study-based learning. A particular focus has been helping students learn from engineering failures. From 2004-07, he directed Rose-Hulman’s Engineering Forensics Research Institute, a National Science Foundation-supported Research Experience for Undergraduates program, and for several years conducted workshops for faculty on incorporating failure case studies into civil engineering curricula.
Sutterer has also contributed nationally to the advancement of civil engineering education. His extensive involvement with the American Society for Engineering Education’s Civil Engineering Division included service as director, program chair, and division chair. Through ASCE, he has helped shape the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge, including work to apply Bloom’s Taxonomy and incorporate the affective domain alongside cognitive learning. He currently serves on ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge Task Committee.
His commitment to developing future engineers has extended well beyond the classroom. As advisor to Rose-Hulman’s Cecil T. Lobo ASCE Student Chapter from 2002-10, he guided the chapter during a period in which it received the Ridgway Award as the nation’s outstanding ASCE student chapter three times. He also contributed to ASCE student activities at the Society level and was recognized as ASCE’s Outstanding Faculty Advisor in 2008.
Sutterer’s professional service includes leadership as president and vice president of the ASCE Metropolitan Indianapolis Branch and multiple terms on its Executive Committee. He has served as an ABET Civil Engineering Program Evaluator since 2012 and became an ABET Commissioner in 2025.
His honors include the National Society of Professional Engineers Young Engineer of the Year award, the George K. Wadlin Distinguished Service Award from the ASEE Civil Engineering Division, and election to the Academy of Civil Engineers at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Sutterer earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla, a master’s degree from Purdue University, and a doctorate in civil/geotechnical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
