Ken Van Treuren
I have always been fascinated by how things work from an early age. Growing up on a farm means that you have to fix lots of things and it is there that I gained an appreciation for machinery and its complexity. That's why I'm an engineer.
But I haven't always been an engineer. For twenty-one years I was in the United States Air Force and served my country as a pilot traveling the world, from Saudi Arabia, to Europe, and the Far East to name a few places . My travels have given me many experiences from which I draw in the classroom. While in the Air Force I also had the unique experience of studying at Oxford University, UK for my DPhil after which I taught at the USAF Academy. My Oxford experience gave me a different perspective on education and how one learns. Observing different cultures worldwide and seeing the influence of energy, or lack of energy resources, on a society left a distinct impression on me. Over the past few years the challenges of energy and its impact on society have become a concern which led to the development of this ELG with Dr. Gravagne.
This is the second time that we have offered Energy and Society. Every person in our society must be educated on energy, its uses, and the consequences of not addressing these challenges in the future. So, this ELG desires participants from all majors, not just technical majors. Energy has a lot to do with technology; however, there are social, political, and economic factors that must also be considered. This is what the ELG Energy and Society will explore. As Christians we must be good stewards of the resources that God has entrusted to us. Learning more about energy and its uses will help us fulfill that responsibility.
I truly believe that God called me to Baylor and can't imagine being at any other place. For eleven years now I have been teaching at Baylor and each year it only gets better. My teaching areas include aeronautics, propulsion systems, heat transfer, thermodynamics, aircraft and engine design, mechanical laboratory techniques, freshmen engineering, and energy topics such as wind energy. Research includes gas turbine heat transfer, low-pressure turbine flow separation, wind turbine design, solar thermal hot water systems, and Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems.
When not teaching I enjoy playing my guitar and singing with the First Baptist Wooday worship team on Sundays, reading/studying about airplanes and their design, and driving my Mazda RX-7. I have been married to Renee for thirty-one years and we have three children, a daughter who graduated from Baylor and is a librarian in town, a son working on his mechanical engineering degree at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, and another son doing a science degree at Dallas Baptist.
