Baker Receives UA Engineering’s Hackney Leadership Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama College of Engineering’s Dr. John Baker, head of the department of aerospace engineering and mechanics, is the 2016 T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership award recipient.

The T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership Award honors a faculty member who exemplifies the constant guidance and leadership necessary to make the College of Engineering exceptional.

Baker received his award at a recent ceremony at the Embassy Suites in downtown Tuscaloosa.

Before his appointment in 2013 to his current position, Baker was a professor in the department of mechanical engineering and an adjunct professor in aerospace engineering and mechanics. He teaches thermodynamics courses at the undergraduate and graduate level along with heat transfer courses and elective courses in rocket propulsion and other space exploration-related topics.

Baker has taught engineering at The University of Alabama since 2001 and has been campus director for the Alabama Space Grant Consortium since 2004. Also, the UA National Alumni Association selected him for the Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award in 2007, the University’s highest honor for excellence in teaching. In 2009, Baker was made a full professor in the College of Engineering.

His research interests include heat transfer, fluid dynamics, propulsion and computational modeling/simulation. He has worked extensively with NASA and directed students on space-related projects. He authored or co-authored more than 70 papers in journals and conference proceedings, and he has been part of 34 external grants and contracts since coming to UA.

Baker is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Society of Engineering Educators.

Before coming to UA, he taught nearly seven years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as an assistant and associate professor of materials and mechanical engineering. He earned all three of his mechanical engineering degrees at the University of Kentucky, receiving his doctorate in 1993. Before starting work on his doctorate, he was a research engineer at Cudo Technologies in Lexington, Kentucky.

This award was created as a tribute to T. Morris Hackney and was made possible by the contributions from John H. Josey and his son, Howard Josey.