Distinguished Engineer Citations

                 

Charles E. Houston

Distinguished Engineer

1989

Degree

Electrical Engineering, B.S. – 1931

Degree

Physics, M.A. – 1932

 

Citation

At Time of Nomination in 1989

Charles Ernest Houston, a Salado, Texas, native, received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University in 1931. One year later in 1932, he graduated again from Texas Tech, this time with a Master of Arts degree in Physics.

Houston, who died in December, 1988, had been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas Tech since 1946, retiring in 1974. He began his career in 1935 as a geophysicist with Humble Oil and Refining Company. He was also the associate editor of Geophysics, the society of exploration geophysicists journal.

He was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Houston from 1942 to 1946, except for one year in 1944 when Houston served as development engineer for the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While an engineer for the Harvard laboratory, he was involved in the development of submarine and anti–submarine warfare devices.

During the summers between 1956 and 1958, Houston was an electronics engineer at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. In 1967, he served as a consultant to the University of Costa Rica in San Jose, where he was instrumental in forming an Electrical Engineering Department.

After his retirement, he taught electrical engineering at the University of Costa Rica for one year in 1975. In 1977, Houston served as the director of the American Friends School in Monteverde, Costa Rica, a private Quaker elementary and secondary school.

In 1986, he traveled to Malaysia with the Texas International Educational Consortium (TIEC), a group of professors from the state of Texas who taught entry level university coursework at the Institut Teknologi MARA, a four–year university in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Houston taught physics at the institute.

He was a member of Eta Kappa Nu, an electrical engineering honorary and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

For his outstanding achievements and the honor he has brought to the engineering profession, Texas Tech takes pride in recognizing Charles Ernest Houston: DISTINGUISHED ENGINEER.

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