SPECIAL FEATURE Dr. Duane S. Ellifritt
A love of teaching, an iconic sculpture and a nationally recognized expert
Dr. Duane Ellifritt grew up in a little hill country town in West Virginia with a pop- ulation of 366. “My parents never went beyond eighth grade in school,” he says. “I didn’t know any college graduates, ex- cept my high school teachers. There was no guidance counselor in my school.” But because of hard work, his own initiative
and the fact that he was good at math, Ellifritt was able to attend college with some fi nancial help from an uncle. He graduated from Hunting- ton, W.V.-based Marshall College (now Marshall University) with a Bachelor of Engineering Sci- ence in 1957, and went on to work immediately for Middletown, Ohio-based Armco Steel’s Metal Products Division, where he spent the next 10 years working in metal building design and com- puter analysis. “Computers were just starting to get popular,” Ellifritt says. “We worked not only in cold-formed metal, but also heavy structural frames. We were making metal buildings, which incorporated both kinds of steel.”
Education importance In spite of his humble beginnings, education has proved to be an integral part of Ellifritt’s career and legacy. While at Armco, he went to night school at the University of Cincinnati and earned a Mas- ters Degree in Structural Engineering in 1967. He earned a Ph.D. from West Virginia University in 1970. His dissertation involved steel deck research. Not wanting to hoard this accumulated
“Having worked for, about, and with the
cold-formed steel industry for 56 years, I am pleased to see its acceptance
in all forms of construction, including residential.”
technical acumen, Ellifritt has found great success teaching students. He taught at Oklahoma State University from 1970 to 1975, and taught steel de- sign at the University of Florida from 1984 to 2000. He taught a course in steel design at the University of Western Australia (SI units) in 1992, and also did some research on cold-formed purlins with a UWA professor. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida. Why did Ellifritt feel the yearning to teach?
“It’s rewarding to see students do well in their studies, then go on to be successful in design fi rms or companies,” he says. “Then several years later at an alumnus meeting, it’s good to see them successful and know that you’ve had a little hand in it.” Although retired from teaching for 13 years,
Ellifritt says he loved being able to impart some knowledge of his own that he picked up from working in the steel industry. “Teachers who come
out of industry have an advantage because they know how to get things done, rather than by read- ing a textbook,” he says. A tool Ellifritt invented to assist students has
attained iconic status. In 1986, he created a steel teaching sculpture containing numerous structural steel connections to help instruct his students in steel construction design at the University of Florida. “I got frustrated in 1985,” Ellifritt says. “I
was teaching steel and when we taught connec- tions, many students had a hard time visualizing a 3-D connection. You can show them two or three views of it, but to show them the whole thing in their mind, they had trouble doing that. I was trying to think of ways that I could help them with that. Field trips were good, but there’s not always a fi eld trip available when you want one. Contractors are not always happy about your coming onto a job site with a bunch of students. My best solution was to create a sculpture on campus with all the differ- ent connections and members commonly used, shown in full scale. I designed the sculpture. It was fabricated in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and erected in October 1986.” It has since been adopted and promoted by
the American Institute of Steel Construction, and reproduced at nearly 200 universities in the United States and other countries.
Information sharing Ellifritt hasn’t just shared his insight, talent and ex- perience with college students; the whole industry has benefi tted from it. He is a nationally recognized expert in the design of light steel buildings and has lectured on related subjects in several countries. Ellifritt was director of engineering and re-
search for the Metal Building Manufacturers Asso- ciation (MBMA) for nine years, where he oversaw MBMA-sponsored research at several universities. He lobbied on behalf of metal buildings at building code hearings all over the country. He became a member of the AISI Committee
on Specifi cations for the Design of Cold-Formed Members in 1976 and a member of the AISC Com- mittee on Specifi cations in 1981. In 1991, Ellifritt was sponsored by the Australian Institute of Steel Construction to give lectures to engineering groups in cities around the country, including Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart, Tasmania, and also Christchurch and Auckland in New Zealand. In 2001, he co-authored “Cold-Formed Steel Struc- tures to the AISI Specifi cations.”
20 METAL CONSTRUCTION NEWS November 2013
www.metalconstructionnews.com
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