2011 Civil Engineering Alumnus of the Year: Prof. Gary Codner
Professor Gary Codner has a distinguished career in Environmental Engineering, including both education and industry. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia.
Professor Codner gained a Bachelor of Engineering (1971) and Doctor of Philosophy (1975) from the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University. After seven years working in the water industry with the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC) on national and international projects, he joined the Department of Civil Engineering as a lecturer in 1981. He was promoted to Professor at Monash University in 2009. In 1999 he became Director of Teaching and Deputy Head of the Department of Civil Engineering. During this time he implemented a unit evaluation process, a problem based learning approach to teaching, and raised the profile and standard of teaching within the Department. He was Founder and Director of the Environmental Engineering degree between 1995 and 2009. This involved developing the program and extending it to combined degree programs, resulting in a keystone program of the Faculty of Engineering.
In 2006 he moved to the position of Associate Dean Teaching in the Faculty of Engineering. In this role he was instrumental in raising the profile of teaching within the faculty, and in lifting the quality and reporting of teaching outputs. In particular, he developed and ran the Leadership in a Technological Environment Program in the Faculty, which has attracted and provided high achieving students the opportunity to develop the skills they will require when leading Engineering developments in the future. The Leadership Program has attracted considerable industry support. Professor Codner also developed the Work Ready Program within the faculty which focuses on industry interaction and student job application skills. He has also been heavily involved in development of the proposed School of Mining Engineering.
Professor Codner is internationally recognised for his research and teaching in the Environmental Engineering area. He has published over 60 papers in this area and had a major involvement in the Co-operative Research Centre in Catchment Hydrology. In the education area he has also published over 13 papers.
He has held positions as Chair of the National Committee of Environmental Engineering, and the inaugural Chair of the College of Environmental Engineering within Engineers Australia. In these roles and throughout his career he has been instrumental in developing Environmental Engineering guidelines for engineers, policies on sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions, and been actively involved in the accreditation process of Environmental Engineering programs in Australia. Within Monash he has contributed to the development of environmental awareness through his role in the Vice Chancellors Group on Environment and Carbon Neutrality.