University of Missouri-Rolla, home to one of the nation's largest metallurgical engineering programs, announced that Dr. Kent Peaslee, Curators’ Teaching Professor of metallurgical engineering, has been named the F. Kenneth Iverson Chair of Steelmaking Technology.

“We conducted a national search for this chair and we found the best qualified person was already here at UMR,” says UMR Provost Warren K. (Kent) Wray.

Nucor Corp. established the UMR chair in 2006, naming it in honor of the company’s founding chairman, F. Kenneth Iverson. UMR will use Nucor’s $2-million endowment to enhance metallurgical engineering education and research. Support for undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students working with Peaslee in steel manufacturing will also be included.

Peaslee, who is also the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in the UMR Materials Science and Engineering Department, joined the UMR faculty as an assistant professor in 1994. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2000, Professor in 2005, and named a Curators’ Teaching Professor in 2006. He is the recipient of seven UMR Faculty Excellence Awards, 10 Outstanding Teaching Awards, the Class of 1942 Excellence in Teaching Award from the MSM-UMR Alumni Association, and the Deans Teaching Scholar Award.

Peaslee is a manufacturing and process metallurgist with research interests in waste and metals recycling, steelmaking, continuous casting, foundry optimization, metal-refractory interactions and environmental aspects of metal manufacturing.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in 1978, Peaslee worked for 13 years in a variety of technical and management positions for steel companies, including Bayou Steel in La Place, La.; Border Steel Mills in El Paso, Texas; Raritan River Steel in Perth Amboy, N.J.; and CF&I Steel in Pueblo, Colo. He later attended graduate school at UMR, where he earned a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering in 1994, and has also published more than 85 papers in technical journals and conference proceedings.

Peaslee is AIST's incoming Officer-at-Large for '07-'08. He is also a member of the American Society of Engineering Educators, American Foundry Society, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Kappa Mu Epsilon.

Founded in 1870 as the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, the University of Missouri–Rolla (UMR) is the oldest technological university west of the Mississippi. UMR, which has an enrollment of 5,500-plus students, has one of the nation's largest programs in metallurgical engineering. For the past 10 years, UMR has averaged 20 to 25 bachelor degrees in metallurgical engineering per year with about half of those graduates taking jobs related to the iron or steel industry. US News and World Report lists UMR as having a top-50 materials science and engineering graduate program.

Nucor and affiliates manufacture steel products, with operating facilities in seventeen states. Products include carbon and alloy steel bars, beams, sheet and plate; steel joists and joist girders; steel deck; cold finished steel; steel fasteners; metal building systems; and light gauge steel framing. At the time it was established, the Nucor-endowed F. Kenneth Iverson Chair of Steelmaking Technologies was the largest corporate cash donation in UMR's history and Nucor’s first donation to endow a chair.