Professor Emeritus, ASE/EM Department, The University of Texas at Austin
B.A. Mathematics 1960, The University of Texas at Austin
M.S. EM 1961, The University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D. EM 1965, The University of Texas at Austin
Wallace Thomas Fowler is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He joined the department faculty in 1965 and held the Paul D. and Betty Robertson Meek Centennial Professorship in Engineering at the time of his retirement in 2017.
Fowler earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (1960), and a master’s (1961) and Ph.D. (1965) in engineering mechanics, all from The University of Texas at Austin.
He was the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the UT College of Engineering General Dynamics Teaching Award (1971), the 1984 AIAA / ASEE John Leland Atwood Award, the 1991 UT Chancellor’s Council Outstanding Teaching Award, the 1994 ASEE Fred Merryfield Design Award and the 2010 UT System Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award.
Fowler was elected to membership in the UT Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 1997. He is a fellow of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He served as national president of ASEE (2000-2001). His areas of teaching and research are dynamics, orbital mechanics, spacecraft and space mission design and aircraft flight testing.
He served as visiting staff at the USAF Test Pilot School during summer and fall of 1976 and as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the US Air Force Academy (1981-82). Although his primary career focus was the aerospace undergraduate curriculum, Fowler supervised 82 MS programs and 16 PhD programs.
In 1985, he developed the Spacecraft/Mission Design course that became the space flight option capstone course of the UT Austin aerospace engineering undergraduate curriculum and taught the course nearly every semester until his retirement in January 2017.
Fowler has served as the ABET accreditation program evaluator at 24 aerospace engineering programs and one aeronautical engineering technology program since 1985. He served as Associate Director of NASA’s Texas Space Grant Consortium (1992-2001) and as its Director (2002-2017).
Fowler currently resides in Austin with his wife Marsha. He has two children and three grandchildren.
