BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (short form)

Kenneth L. Carper is a registered Architect with a professional Bachelor of Architecture degree and a Master’s degree in Structural Engineering.  He is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).  Carper is a founding member and past Chairman of the national ASCE Committee on Dissemination of Failure Information.  He is past Chairman of the Executive Committee of the national ASCE Technical Council on Forensic Engineering (TCFE) and is Chairman of the TCFE Publications Committee.  In 1986 he was named the founding Editor-in-Chief of the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, a position he continues to hold.  He also served as member and Chairman of ASCE Management Group A, which coordinated five society divisions and the technical activities of approximately sixty national committees.  Currently, Carper is a member of the Board Committee on Publications of the national ASCE Board of Directors, a five-member committee that sets policy for all publications of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the largest publisher of civil engineering resources in the world.

Carper is a Professor in the School of Architecture & Construction Management at Washington State University where he has responsibility for all Architectural Structures courses taught to students in the Architecture and Construction Management programs.  He has been recognized with several teaching awards: the Outstanding Professor in the WSU College of Engineering & Architecture (1985), the Outstanding Professor of Architecture Award (1983, 1984, 1985, 1992, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2008 and 2009), the 1999 Faculty Award from the WSU Honors College, the 2000 Faculty Award from the WSU/UI Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), and the Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Education Association (1992).  In 1994, he was the recipient of the all-university President’s Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award (Sahlin Award) from Washington State University, and in 2009 he received the Reid C. Miller Award as the Outstanding Teaching Professor in the College of Engineering and Architecture.

Carper has written many papers on forensic engineering and on the subject of ethics in the design professions.  He is the editor/author of five books, Forensic Engineering: Learning from Failures (ASCE 1986), Forensic Engineering (Elsevier 1989, CRC Press 1998 and 2000), Construction Failure (Wiley 1997), Why Buildings Fail (NCARB 2001) and Mitigating the Potential for Progressive Disproportionate Structural Collapse (ASCE 2006).   He received the national Daniel W. Mead Award for one of his publications (ASCE 1982) and the national Richard Torrens Award twice for his work as journal editor (ASCE  1991 & 2006).  He was given the 1994 Engineer of The Year award by the Inland Empire Section of the ASCE (Washington and Idaho) and was the recipient of the 1997 national Forensic Engineering Award (ASCE).  Carper has lectured extensively about structural failures to students, faculty and professional groups of architects, engineers and building officials in the United States, Canada, Europe, UK, Ireland, India, China, Taiwan and Japan.