Professor, CEE Excellence Faculty Scholar, and Director, Newmark Structural Engineering Laboratory James LaFave (BS 86, MS 87) has been selected to receive the 2026 Best Article Award from the Study Abroad & International Students (SAIS) Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). The award is for his paper entitled “Internationalising an Engineering Group Project Course: An Intercultural Contact Study”, which was published last year in the European Journal of Engineering Education. The collaborative and interdisciplinary research, sponsored in part by The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois' “Grants for Advancement of Teaching in Engineering” (GATE) program, was co-authored by Professor Hyun-Sook Kang from the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in Illinois' College of Education.
The award-winning study examined the effects of instructional interventions on students’ self- and peer-assessed intercultural competence while completing a group design project in two different semester’s offerings of CEE 465 “Design of Structural Systems”. Analysis of quantitative data suggested the impact of structured interventions on students’ introspective awareness of cultural differences and uncertainty about how to deal with such differences, which was validated by qualitative reflection data illustrating students’ acknowledgement of intercultural differences during completion of the semester-long group design project. Findings highlighted the broad benefits and learning opportunities of forming diverse teams for engineering design projects, allowing students to gain practical experience while technically collaborating with classmates from a range of backgrounds.
LaFave has been on faculty of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Illinois since 1999. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of structural design, including courses on behavior, design, and assessment of reinforced concrete, structural steel, and prestressed concrete building, bridge, and ballpark structures. He also works with students in his capacity as Faculty Adviser to the Illinois CEE Steel Bridge Team.
CIES is the sixth different professional organization to recognize LaFave’s work with a journal paper award. He previously received the Alan H. Yorkdale Memorial Award (for best paper concerning clay shale, concrete, or sand-lime masonry) in 2006 from ASTM International, an Outstanding TMS Journal Paper Award in 2007 from The Masonry Society, the ACI Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper in 2009 from the American Concrete Institute, the Outstanding Paper Award for the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities in 2016 from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Martin P. Korn Award in 2023 from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute for best PCI Journal design/research/state-of-the-art paper on precast concrete for buildings and other structures.
The 2026 Best Article Award will be presented at the SAIS Business Meeting of the CIES Annual Conference in San Francisco on March 31, 2026.