Awards

Honorary Degree - 1972

LL.D.

Doctor of Laws

Commencement

Bloomington, Indiana

Presenter: John William Ryan

About John Alexander Logan

Educated in both his native Canada and the United States, John A. Logan alternately followed the role of practicing engineer and teacher until called to the presidency of Rose-Hulman Polytechnic Institute in nearby Terre Haute in 1962. He earned the B.Sc. and B.C.E. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and the M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees from Harvard University. He also holds an honorary doctorate from Indiana State University.

Dr. Logan's first engineering post was with the Saskatchewan Highway Department from 1929 to 1932. He taught at Iowa State College from 1935 to 1936 and then spent a year as a design engineer in Chicago. He returned to the classroom as assistant professor at the University of Missouri between 1937 and 1941. Following this was a two-year period as chief engineer for a professional firm in St. Louis. He was in the U.S. Army in World War II, serving as chief engineer of the Amazon River project. After the war he served in the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation in France and then as supervisor of projects in Sardinia, Italy, and England.

Dr. Logan returned to academia in 1954, serving as chairman of civil engineering and associate director of the Transportation Center at Northwestern University before being elected president of Rose-Hulman in 1962. He has served in varying capacities on the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Research Council to meet problems in environmental health and metropolitan planning, urban transportation, and water and waste disposal. For his engineering accomplishments he has been decorated by the governments of Sardinia and Brazil.

He is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineers, the National Society of Professional Engineers, the American Public Works Association, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and Sigma Xi. He is the author of The Sardinian Project (1952), and Environmental Engineering and Metropolitan Planning (1962), as well as co-author of Engineering Administration (1963).