Dr. Helene Hilger, 2007 Recipient

“She loves to teach, and she does a great job!” is what students and faculty colleagues say about Helene Hilger. That certainly would be a challenge when teaching about sewage, garbage or hazardous waste. But Hilger has done it so well that she has received her college’s award for undergraduate teaching once and graduate teaching twice.

“Her passion for the environment and for helping students understand their role in both protecting and engineering the earth led to my decision to further pursue an education in environmental engineering,” wrote a former student. All her current and former students comment on how she engages a mix of undergraduate and graduate students in group activities and in her research projects, how she always has time for students, and the excellent role model and advise she is for them. They also praise her extensive involvement with colleagues and professional societies that provide outstanding opportunities for students. As faculty director of the campus Environmental Assistance Office, she works the office’s executive director, who is a former student, to involve 25 students in research.

“Dr. Hilger blends theory and practice, field work and class/lab work, and brings reality and emerging engineering concepts to her classes via her personal experiences,” a faculty colleague said. Having begun teaching in 1979, Hilger notes that she worked hard to develop successful learning tools that include group design projects, hands-on demonstrations designed by small groups, required field trips and poster reports, bingo and Jeopardy games to teach concepts, extra credit for performance of thematic songs she has written on class topics, and an annual hunger feast to demonstrate how few in the world have safe drinking water.

She has engaged extensively in interdisciplinary projects to benefit students. With faculty members from two other colleges and three other UNC institutions, she received funding to develop an interdisciplinary problem-based learning curriculum. As editor of a journal, she works with technical writing students and their professor to teach students how to edit. Her “quintessential interdisciplinary experience”
was with an architecture professor as their respective students in an Architecture-Engineering Summer Design Studio in Spain learned to work collaboratively rather than sequentially as is so often the case.

Hilger’s passion for teaching does not wane. She recently assumed the lead role to develop courses and a research program in sustainable communities. Her new Sustainable Design course is such a popular elective that she is working to expand a “sustainable concentration” to all students. To more broadly support these efforts, she initiated a national sustainability committee for the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In her words, “I work hard to win my students’ interest because even after all these years of teaching, I am still impressed by the power of what a civil engineering graduate can do. With a mere bachelor’s degree in hand, she or he can contribute to solving some of the most pressing environmental problems that exist in the developed and developing world.”