September 26, 2016
Shultis endowed by teaching excellence fund
J. Kenneth Shultis, professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, has been named a recipient of the Ike and Letty Evans Cornerstone Teaching Scholar Excellence Fund in the College of Engineering.
Established to honor Ike, a 1965 K-State graduate in electrical engineering, and Letty Evans, the fund promotes teaching excellence in the College of Engineering at Kansas State University.
The Cornerstone Teaching Scholars program encourages the college's best teaching instructors and professors to teach the most fundamental courses in the sophomore and junior years, thus improving student retention and graduation rates by ensuring students obtain the best possible learning experience in the early, formative stages of an engineering education.
Shultis graduated from the University of Toronto with a bachelor's degree in engineering physics. He earned both his master's and doctoral degrees in nuclear science and engineering from the University of Michigan. After a postdoctoral year at the Mathematics Institute of the University of Groningen, in Groningen, Netherlands, he joined the nuclear engineering faculty at Kansas State University in 1969.
He presently holds the Black and Veatch Distinguished Professorship and is director of the nuclear engineering program at K-State. His research focus includes neutron and radiation transport, radiation shielding, reactor physics, numerical analysis, particle combustion, remote sensing of the environment and utility energy and economic analyses.
Shultis is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and recently received the society's Rockwell Lifetime Achievement Award for more than 50 years of contributions to the radiation shielding community. He is the co-author of five text books, has written more than 150 research papers and reports, and served as the major professor for more than 45 master's and doctoral students.