Joyce and Andrew Green

Lamar University alumni Andrew and Joyce Moore Green established a new academic chair in Lamar University's College of Engineering with a $1.2 million gift from the Green Foundation. A native of Southeast Texas, Andrew Green graduated from Lamar University in 1954 with a bachelor science degree in civil engineering.

He received a master's degree from Southern Methodist University in 1958 and worked for Bethlehem Steel in Beaumont, Texas, and for General Dynamics in Fort Worth before founding Composite Technology, Inc., in the 1960s. An engineering and manufacturing company, Composite Technology made all-composite buildings, composite structures for industrial applications including bridges, roofing, siding, decking, purlins, grids, cooling towers, and wireline service units. Green's talents with composites also extended to his creation of the world-dominating Chaparral race car of the 1960s and to racing sailboats. A registered professional engineer, Green holds several patents for composite structures.

Dr. Robert Yuan

Noted researcher in structural analysis and design, materials and mechanics, Robert Yuan has filled the Andrew and Joyce Green Chair in Engineering.

A 34-year faculty member at the University of Texas at Arlington, Yuan brings to Lamar University industrial experience in analysis and design of tall buildings and more than two decades of concrete research at two universities. His major research projects include high-strength concrete, fly-ash concrete, sulfur-impregnated concrete and prestressed concrete columns and wall panels, structural plastic connections and fiber-reinforced polymer composite columns.

Yuan's technical publications include the areas of creep and shrinkage of concrete, freeze-thaw durability, corrosion of reinforcement, temperature effect, thermal stress and civil composite structures. With more than 50 refereed papers and more than 60 other technical reports to his credit, Yuan is frequently called upon to give technical presentations at national and international conferences. In 2004, Yuan served as vice chair of a symposium on composites in Houston.