A letter from Dr. Shahram Khosrowpanah, founding dean of the School of Engineering, who retired as of Sept. 30, 2021

I am writing this retirement message to say goodbye and extend my good wishes to all my former students, colleagues, and friends. It has been a great pleasure and a lifetime of unforgettable memories. 

I came to Guam 36 years ago to take a faculty position with what eventually became the Water & Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific, or WERI. President [Thomas] Krise graciously noted last week that my career has spanned more than half of the University’s existence. At that moment, I realized my service at the University also spans more than half of my own lifetime. I have invested all but the earliest years of my entire career at the University of Guam serving the wonderful, generous people it serves across the Western Pacific.

In my early years at WERI, my engineer colleagues and I reactivated the then inactive UOG two-year pre-engineering program. This program had been conceived by one of our colleagues a few years earlier and had been approved by the UOG Board of Regents but had not yet been implemented. We developed and taught four basic engineering courses, which we offered through what was then the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences.  

Although undergraduate instruction was beyond our scope of duties as research faculty, teaching and mentoring the eager and bright young people who enrolled became one of the joys of my career, indeed my lifetime. In the early 1990s, WERI faculty collaborated with other UOG faculty to launch UOG’s graduate Environmental Science Program. I actively participated in this program, which has since graduated more than 70 students with Master of Science degrees in geoscience-engineering, biology-ecology, or economics management. Some 40 of them worked on thesis projects funded by WERI. Among them and the students who went through the pre-engineering program, at least 25 are now employed on Guam and throughout the region, with many in senior management and teaching positions.

I have now seen an entire generation of our local children grow up, earn college degrees, and join the local professional communities of engineers, environmental scientists, and educators. I am now retiring with satisfaction and pride in their success and in their contributions to improving the quality of life, health, welfare, and comfort of the wonderful people that have been my friends, neighbors, co-workers, students, and family for most of my lifetime and all of my career.

For the past five years, it has been my privilege to lead the University’s new School of Engineering through its formative stages. I am grateful to former President [Robert] Underwood for his confidence in me and to the regents and my fellow deans for their steadfast support of our new program. The school now has a skilled and dedicated faculty and a WASC-accredited four-year curriculum and will graduate its first students with bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering this December. 

Although for family and health reasons, my wife, Micki, and I are relocating to Tucson, Ariz., my heart will always be here on Guam and with my students, colleagues, neighbors, and friends throughout the region.