A Colorado college has named an institute in honor of Fordham University alumnus John Trefny (FCRH ’63), Ph.D., and his wife Sharon.
The John and Sharon Trefny Institute for Education Innovation is designed to advance the Colorado School of Mines’ “strong leadership in engineering education,” according to a statement released by the Golden, Colo.-based university.
Trefny, who earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Fordham, served as the Colorado School of Mines’ president from 2001 until his retirement in 2006. The new institute comprises the Center for Engineering Education, the Office of Innovation in Learning and Teaching, and the Center for Assessment of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
The center will be funded, in part, by an endowment established by alumni and friends who contributed more than $800,000 in honor of the Trefnys in 2006. Trefny, a member of the Mines’ faculty since 1977, received his Ph.D. in physics from Rutgers University. After a post-doctoral appointment at Cornell University, he taught at Wesleyan University before joining the faculty at the Colorado college.
A winner of several teaching excellence awards, Trefny has authored over 70 technical publications on such topics as quantum mechanics, the thermal properties of organic materials, superconductivity and acoustics and direct energy conversion.
