2008 Scholarship of Engagement Award

William S. Kisaalita

William S. Kisaalita, biological and agricultural engineering professor and graduate coordinator, is a founding member of UGA’s engineering faculty. He is both a pioneer of and advocate for service-learning and the scholarship of engagement in his department.

Kisaalita has merged his research interests in biological and agricultural engineering with his commitment to actively encourage students to apply what they learn in the classroom to real-world problems. He has created several international service-learning courses in which undergraduate students design practical solutions to engineering problems for individuals at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

“Dr. Kisaalita structured a study abroad program that immerses students in the culture of another country and fully engages them in assessing local needs and developing culturally appropriate solutions to significant problems,” wrote Dale Threadgill, head of UGA’s department of biological and agricultural engineering.

Students have developed milk coolers powered by renewable energy sources for smallholder farmers in Uganda, most of whom earn less than $5 a day; created solar-powered incubators for guinea fowl hatcheries in Burkina Faso, the fourth-poorest country in the world according to the 2006 United Nations Development Programme index; and invented a hand-operated argan nutcracker for women’s cooperatives in Morocco.

Kisaalita is determined to expand service-learning opportunities for students in his department. His work already has inspired several other engineering faculty members to develop service-learning study-abroad programs in Costa Rica and Thailand.

Since 1991, he has authored more than 60 journal articles, applied for two patents and generated more than $4 million in contracts and grants 13 percent of which has been engagement-related. He received the 2006 Outstanding Teaching Faculty Award from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, was named the 2004 University Mentor of the Year and received the 2002 Lowry H. Gillespie, Jr. Award for engineering curriculum enhancement.