Captain Riester Named Head of CEE

The Virginia Military Institute Superintendent announced that Captain John E. Riester, Jr. '78 has been named Head of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, effective April 1, 2009.
 
A professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Captain Riester joined the VMI faculty in 1993 after earning his Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering at Old Dominion University.  In 2001-2002, he was a distinguished visiting professor in civil engineering at the United Sates Air Force Academy.  A winner of the VMI Distinguished Teaching Award (1999), he is a popular and effective teacher who enjoys an exceptionally good rapport with cadets both inside and outside the classroom and who devotes a great deal of energy to recruiting and retaining CEE majors.  Since 2002, he has served as the Superintendent's Representative to the Honor Court, and he has been director of VMI's Summer Transition Program since 2006.  Captain Riester has organized cadet participation in the Society of Women Engineers annual conferences since 2001.