Joseph L.A. Hughes has been named as the recipient of the 2017 William E. Sayle Award for Achievement in Education, given by the IEEE Education Society. He will be presented with this award at the Frontiers in Education Conference, to be held October 18-21, 2017 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

A professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Hughes is receiving this honor “for contributions to computer science and engineering through academic leadership at Georgia Institute of Technology, for leadership in the IEEE Education Society, for service to accreditation through IEEE and ABET, for development of computer science and engineering curricula through the Model Curricula studies, and for contributions to the Frontiers in Education Conference.” The award is named for the late Bill Sayle, who was a member of the Georgia Tech ECE faculty from 1970-2003 and served as the School’s associate chair for Undergraduate Affairs from 1988-2003.

This award is given to a member of the IEEE Education Society to recognize significant contributions over a period of years in one of the Society’s fields of interest, which are the theory and practice of education and educational technology involved in the effective delivery of domain knowledge of all fields within the scope of interest of IEEE. Hughes has been extraordinarily committed to serving ECE, Georgia Tech, and the profession as a whole. He was named an ECE associate chair in 1997 and then served as the School’s senior associate chair from 2006-2013, with responsibility for managing faculty workload, teaching assignments, class scheduling, program accreditation, and other aspects of academic operation and administration.

Hughes has been a leader in engineering program development, including Georgia Tech’s computer engineering program and the GT-Savannah programs, assessment and accreditation activities, and engineering education initiatives. A former member of the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, Hughes continues to serve as a team chair for accreditation visits and was recently invited to serve as a member of the training program for new program evaluators.

“I would like to thank Joe for his many years of hard work and dedication to providing high quality educational programs for our students,” said Steven W. McLaughlin, professor and Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in ECE. “We are very fortunate to have him in ECE and at Georgia Tech, and we are grateful for his service.”