Biography

Member #24803, initiated by the University of Missouri-Rolla (Missouri Science & Technology University) chapter in 1969 and served that chapter as secretary while an undergraduate. He received degrees from UMR (BSCE, 1970), Oklahoma State (MSCE, 1974) and Purdue (PhD, 1985). He was employed by the St. Louis District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1967 to 1985, was adjunct professor at Washington University - St. Louis (1984-1985), and has been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University since 1986. Since 1998, he has served as Associate Dean of Engineering for Undergraduate Studies at MSU. At Michigan State, he served as faculty advisor to Chi Epsilon from 1987 to 1998, and received the Chi Epsilon Great Lakes District Excellence-in-Teaching Award in 1993. He was elevated to Chapter Honor Member by the Michigan State Chapter in 1991. Dr. Wolff's teaching, research, and consulting interests center in geotechnical engineering, risk and reliability in geotechnical engineering, dams, levees and hydraulic structures, early engineering courses, and engineering education. In 2005, he was a member of the ASCE team that did the preliminary assessment of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the New Orleans levee system.