About Dr. Tritico
Dr. Tritico is an expert in water resources engineering, fish passage engineering and stream restoration. He is one of the five founding members of the engineering department and devotes much of his energy nurturing the next generation of engineers. His scholarly research has focused on the effects of turbulence on aquatic systems. He has experience as a private consultant and with the Department of Energy National Labs. He holds a joint Ph.D. in civil engineering and aquatic ecology from the University of Michigan.
Research
His 13 years of research expertise are in stream restoration and fish passage engineering, and he has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Transportation, among others.
Building a Better World
I love civil engineering because I feel that every day I’m building a better world around me!I like to celebrate the little things, like watching my students go off and be successful in their own ways. I also secretly love driving past things that I helped build just to say to my family ‘you know… I helped build that’ as they roll their eyes.
Hands-on Learning
The engineering department at Mount Union uses project based learning in almost every course we teach. This means that in each of my courses we have a hands-on project where students help real clients from the community. Pretty early on in my teaching, I realized that it wasn’t enough to simply teach a subject. Rather, my role is to ‘grow people.’ Building successful, young professionals means caring about – and pushing – each one of my students.
Favorite Part of Job
I love seeing my students mature from teenagers with a propensity for tinkering to young professionals. Oh, and driving past things I’ve built of course!
Engineering Department
The Engineering Department here at Mount is doing so many unique and incredible things these days – it makes me want to be a student myself. For starters, we’re focused on undergraduate engineering education, and everything we do centers around our students’ learning. We’re also a highly technical engineering department embedded in a liberal arts environment. This means that our students not only leave with strong technical skills but their communication skills and knowledge of the broader world always impress me. As an example, every student in our program participates in an international engineering experience. During this experience, students travel to and work with international communities who have different languages and cultural norms than our own. Students love the experience and we can proudly say that every one of our graduates is truly prepared to excel in the global engineering marketplace.
Reason to Major in Engineering
In what other profession can you literally drive around your town and see that you’re making an impact?
Favorite Building
EBB – it’s the place to be!