The American Society of Civil Engineers has elected Emory Kemp, director of the Institute for the History of Technology&Industrial Archaeology in the West Virginia University Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, as an honorary member.

Prior to this years induction of 12 honorary members, the society had only honored 522 since its founding in 1852. Dr. Kemp will be honored Oct. 23, along with the other honorary members, at a luncheon in Baltimore, Md. More than 70 professional engineers joined together to prepare and submit Kemps nomination to the ASCE headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Kemp received his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Illinois. In 1962, he arrived at WVU to establish a structural engineering graduate program, and in 1989 Dr. Kemp established WVU ’s program in the history of science and technology.

He is recognized for both researching and preserving historical industrial sites around the country and overseas and advocating their public interpretations through the use of a material culture approach for studying the industrial past.

Kemp was also a founding member and a former president of the Society for Industrial Archeology and a former president of the Public Works Historical Society. He has served as a fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies at Imperial College in London; as a RegentsFellow at the Smithsonian Institution, where he was involved in research on the history of suspension bridges; and as a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he continued his research on the history of the early modern suspension bridge for a forthcoming book.

Currently, Kemp is serving as director emeritus of the Institute of the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at WVU , a position he has held since 1989.

This recognition for Dr. Kemp comes as no surprise,said Rudolph Almasy interim dean of the Eberly College.”Dr. Kemp is an individual with many talents and interests.

The ASCE Web site recognizes Dr. Kemp by saying he was selected as an honorary memberfor his international leadership in the history of civil engineering, industrial archaeology and historic preservation, and for his extensive service in these fields with the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Concrete Institute, and the Institute for Civil Engineers and the Institution of Structural Engineers in Britain.

For more information about ASCE or Kemps honor, visithttp://www.asce.org/pressroom/honors/honors_details.cfm?hdlid=96