Khalid Khan
Professor of Engineering

Born in India and “been moving west ever since,” as he says — first to Pakistan for his undergraduate degree, and then to North Carolina for his graduate degrees, and then to Oregon for research in electron microscopy, and then to The Bluff in 1979 to teach, “O, nearly everything, statics and stress analysis, material sciences and manufacturing processes, welding engineering and metallurgy, freshman and senior seminars... I’ve visited literature classes to talk about the Islamic calendar, and religion classes to talk about Islam, I do that every year, because I feel very strongly that both East and West must have a balanced view of each other — we must look at all sides of a thing, be it a problem or a faith...

“What I like best about teaching is that light in the students’ eyes when they get it. You can actually see their faces brighten. This is an especially delightful dynamic when we are dealing with a difficult concept they have only encountered as a mathematical problem, but are now encountering as a physical reality — something like biaxial stretching in metals, where stress theory in class pales before lab work in which we actually see and measure what’s happening. It becomes real for them. The best learning, certainly in engineering, is in labs and projects; that’s where the discoveries are.


“Teaching never grows dull for me because the students and the questions are new every year. And there is no time for me to grow stale, for twenty years ago I was sentenced to also being an associate dean. The theory was that 50% of the time I would teach and 50% be a dean, but that seems to add up to 140% somehow. But I am a materials engineer and not a mathematician, so it will have to remain a mystery...”